Biennials have been central to the development of contemporary art for decades, but there is a paucity of published material specifically related to this subject. Documentation for these important exhibitions is not always made available and it is often difficult to acquire, posing an obstacle to current and future research across a number of areas within contemporary art, curating and art history. This article offers an overview of major current biennials and of the different sources of information they produce (catalogues, other printed material, online resources, archives), and surveys the secondary literature of the phenomenon. It also discusses specific collection development issues in libraries, from a research perspective, proposing a set of recommendations for best practice.

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This paper discusses the information literacy requirements of art and design students, and how traditional approaches to information literacy education are not always appropriate for these particular students. The paper argues that different, creative, and innovative approaches to information literacy training need to be developed with the specific learning styles of this group of students in mind and that using a radical information literacy approach, incorporating the specific nature of the art and design information landscape, enables this. Using the University of the Arts London (UAL) as a specific art and design higher education institution, the paper shares three separate case studies which demonstrate such approaches including the incorporation of drawing, object-based learning, and enquiry-based learning into information literacy.

Welcome to this special issue of the Art libraries journal, dedicated to critical art librarianship. For more than a decade, librarians in North America and elsewhere have increasingly engaged in the use of theory as a tool to question and redefine existing professional discourses and practices. In parallel, these critical approaches have also repositioned social justice as a core responsibility and goal of librarianship. The concepts of critical librarianship generally, and critical art librarianship in particular, are explored in this issue through multiple perspectives: theorisations, case studies and reflections, as well as accounts of activism.Many of the articles included here follow on from two recent conferences, 'Towards a critical (art) librarianship: theories and practices' held at

Gustavo Grandal Montero (ALJ):Could you give an overview of the main aims and context of the project?Ami Clarke (AC): The Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing (DAAP) is an interactive, user-driven, searchable database of artists’ books and publications, that acts as a hub to engage with others, built by artists, publishers and a community of creative practitioners in contemporary artists’ publishing, developed via an ethically-driven design process, and supported by Wikimedia UK and Arts Council England. The project is inspired by the site of Banner Repeater's public Archive of Artists’ Publishing on Hackney Downs train station, with 11,000 people passing a day, in response to the need for a similarly dynamic approach to archiving in an online context.