Art Documentation

Art Documentation is the official journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 1982–present. It includes articles and information relevant to art librarianship and visual resources curatorship. Since 1996, it has been published twice yearly (spring and fall). Art Documentation is published for ARLIS/NA by University of Chicago Press, which supports green open access for all of its journals. Subscription to Art Documentation is included as part of ARLIS/NA membership.

Members-only Access

ARLIS/NA members may access Art Documentation electronically via a controlled access site:

Members-only access to Art Documentation

Authors

Authors who wish to publish their work in Art Documentation should consult the Contributor Guidelines.

Authors may self-archive their own articles and make them freely available through institutional repositories after a one-year embargo. Authors may also post their articles in their published form on their personal or departmental web pages or personal social media pages, use the article in teaching or research presentations, provide single copies in print or electronic form to their colleagues, or republish the article in a subsequent work, subject to giving proper credit to the original publication of the article in Art Documentation, including reproducing the exact copyright notice as it appears in the journal.

Non-member Access to Journal

To purchase individual issues please contact University of Chicago Press customer service online; by email at subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu; or via phone at +1 877-705-1878 (toll-free, U.S. & Canada), or +1 773-753-3347 (International).

Tables of Contents

To search Art Documentation contents 1982–present, visit the journal home page with the University of Chicago Press.

Current Issue Abstracts

Art Documentation Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 2026)

Testing and Implementation of Machine Learning Tools for Semi-Automated Subject Indexing of Getty’s AATA

Lynda Bunting

This article presents the testing and implementation of two machine learning tools that automatically generate index terms for AATA, an abstracting and indexing database published by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). Tests of the tools showed that semi-automating the indexing process for a predetermined set of records can help streamline the workflow. The tools were trained on bibliographic records extracted from AATA and the more than 13,000 conservation- and preservation-related subject terms that AATA uses from Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). The author describes the two tools and discusses their implementation, accuracy, incorporation into AATA’s workflow, and need for human oversight.

[This article is an expansion of a paper presented at the 10th International Conference of Art Libraries held in Barcelona, Spain, in October 2024.]

Designing an Accessible and Sustainable Digital Catalogue Raisonné: Interdisciplinary Approaches and the Case of Ted Stamm

Elizabeth Ashley Fox-Jensen

This article presents an overview of the findings from the first doctoral research to examine digital catalogue raisonné development through interdisciplinary methodologies. While digital catalogues raisonnés have proliferated since the mid-2000s, systematic research examining their design methodologies and long-term sustainability remains limited. The development of digital catalogue raisonnés is viewed through the perspectives of art history, design, digital humanities, and textual scholarship, using the catalogue raisonné of American conceptual artist Ted Stamm (1944–1984) as a case study. The case study, which is in progress, documents Stamm’s complete oeuvre including paintings, works on paper, and photographic documentation.

Open-Access Teaching Resources: Building a Lesson Plan Repository for Art, Architecture, and Design Librarians

Cindy Frank, Sara Mautino, K. Sarah Ostrach, and Aubree Tillett

Art, architecture, and design librarians collaborated to develop the Design Library Lesson Plans Repository, an open-access collection hosted on Knowledge Commons. The repository preserves and shares teaching tools, including handouts, lesson plans, and slide decks, tailored to the unique information needs of these disciplines. It aims to expand instructional repertoires, foster collaboration, and strengthen students’ information literacy. This article outlines the project’s development, from platform evaluation and metadata design to outreach through professional associations. It also discusses challenges stemming from the Humanities Commons migration to Knowledge Commons Works and emphasizes the continuing value of collaborative, discipline-based repositories for sustaining knowledge-sharing.

Guiding the Creative Mind: A Survey of Librarian Practices and Perspectives on Research Guides for Art Students

Katie Edmiston 

This article describes the results of a survey distributed to art librarians at independent art and design colleges to ascertain how librarians use online research guides to support the unique needs of art students. Responses highlighted a growing shift towards intentionality in guide creation, increased efforts to support non-traditional research needs, and the role of guides in promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. While research guides serve as valuable 24/7 resources, concerns remain in relation to user engagement, time constraints for guide updates or maintenance, and platform limitations. The results underscore the need for continued research on how art students interact with and use research guides.

[This article is based on the poster that was presented by the author at the 52nd annual ARLIS/NA conference held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in April 2024.]

The Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Archive: Expanding Access through Data and Narratives

Katherine Prater and Margaret Smithglass

The Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University has a multi-year project underway to create an online digital archive for the archival collections of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose principles of “organic architecture” helped to define and transform the architectural landscape of the twentieth century. These holdings are among the most requested items in Avery’s Drawings & Archives department and include a range of format types. The mandate for the project’s first phase, a three-year, donor-funded initiative, was to digitize and provide access to the residential drawings, comprising more than half of the collection’s total of nearly 30,000 objects. Initially envisioned as a traditional, albeit large-scale, digitization project, this work has presented unexpected opportunities to critically assess how the collection was historically described and used. This article will highlight the project’s reparative cataloging and digital publishing aspects, which have enhanced content discoverability and supported outreach to Avery’s diverse and expanding community of users.

[This article is an expansion of a paper presented at the 53rd annual ARLIS/NA conference held virtually in May 2025 as part of the session “Breaking Barriers Using Art and Architectural Data.”]

Image as an Information Sensorium: Toward a Framework to Analyze the Historiography of Images

Hedren Wai Yuan Sum

This paper presents the image as an Information Sensorium, a conceptual and methodological framework for analyzing images as informational entities in the digital age. Aiming to strengthen scholarship in art documentation, visual resources curation, and digital image management, the framework integrates interpretive traditions from art history and semiotics with information science approaches to structure how images produce and transmit meaning. Using Hieronymus Bosch’s Wayfarer Triptych as a case study, the study combines close reading with digital tools, including citation mapping and AI-assisted interpretation, to trace how image meanings evolve across sensory, cultural, and technological contexts. The framework’s five facets—sense-data, information, knowledge, reality, and extended reality—organize this process and support both human and machine-led interpretive analysis. A twofold experiment with generative AI demonstrates how the Information Sensorium can guide structured comparison and speculative reconstruction, revealing new ways of visualizing interpretive uncertainty. By connecting sensory perception, informational structures, and digital mediation, the paper contributes to the future of art librarianship and digital image scholarship, offering a transferable model for documenting and analyzing the evolving informational lives of images.

[This article is an expansion of a paper presented at the 53rd annual ARLIS/NA conference held virtually in May 2025 as part of the session “Breaking Barriers Using Art and Architectural Data.”]

Displaying Challenging Historical Objects: The Forbidden City Playing Cards
Bing Wang and Ruthann E. Mowry

Produced in 1901, The Forbidden City, Pekin & Chinese Views Souvenir Playing Cards pair leisure with political ideology. Marketed as an “artistic and accurate” record of the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), many images were staged or misattributed, reinforcing stereotypes of China and its people to rationalize Western military intervention. Introducing a digital exhibition, the article addresses three issues inherent to the object: contested histories, constructed photographic representations, and the ethics of “playful” media. The exhibition advances context-first, community of care strategies, positioning academic art libraries and visual collections as mediators and offering a reproducible framework for ethically stewarding contested images.

Final Chapters: How Academic Art Librarians Navigate Institutional Closure
Becky Alexander

In the past decade, a growing number of art colleges have permanently closed, including the Oregon College of Art and Craft, Memphis College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, among others. For academic art librarians, such closures entail not only the loss of employment but the dismantling of professional communities, the urgent stewardship needs of specialized collections, and the need to support students and faculty through sudden institutional collapse. This article draws on interviews with librarians from multiple art colleges that have undergone closure, presenting their experiences as case studies. Through these narratives, it examines the challenges and decision-making processes surrounding collection disposition, archival preservation, staff transitions, and career resilience. By foregrounding the voices of librarians who have navigated these complex and emotionally charged circumstances, this research offers practical strategies, ethical considerations, and lessons learned to guide and support future librarians confronting similar institutional crises.

A Tough Row to Hoe: Weeding an Art and Design Collection
Amy Lazet

While much has been published on weeding library collections, there is still a relative dearth of information on weeding art and design libraries. This paper provides a literature review of the criteria for weeding library collections, with a focus on art-related collections specifically. This information is supplemented by a survey of the current state of deaccessioning in art and design libraries and an overview of a comprehensive weeding project undertaken at the author’s former institution. The detailed criteria used in the author’s weeding project is provided in an appendix.

[This article is an expansion of a paper presented at the 53rd annual ARLIS/NA conference held virtually in May 2025 as part of the session “Curation Craft: Hidden Histories, Collection Criteria, and Critical Biases.”]

ARLIS/NA MOQ: Community Building, Communities of Practice
John Latour

This article addresses the archival and bibliographic research carried out by the author during a six-month sabbatical to explore the history of ARLIS/NA MOQ—the first Canadian chapter of ARLIS/NA. It also looks at the sabbatical’s research outcomes, several of which point to the chapter’s development as a community of art information specialists. To better understand the chapter as a community, this article draws on theories of “communities of practice” and the author’s own professional experience within ARLIS/NA MOQ. The author reflects upon the suitability of “communities of practice” theories to describe the chapter.

[This article is based on a talk given as a “Sabbatical Brown Bag” event held at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, in May 2025].