It is more different than you think: Art libraries in Germany and the UK

Firstly, it is an honour to be asked to contribute to this anniversary issue. AKMB is celebrating 25 years as an organization supporting and representing art and museum librarians and libraries (1). ARLIS/UK & Ireland celebrated 50 years in 2019 and the Art Libraries Journal (ALJ) celebrated 40 years in 2016, so I have spent a lot of my 7 years as editor of the ALJ reflecting on how far we have come. The past couple of generations have overseen tremendous achievements in the profession worldwide and these milestones are an opportunity to reflect on those changes and to look forward. This is a personal perspective and is intended to be (often) light-hearted, it also is limited to what I have observed within the limitations of having attained my education outside of Germany and of operating in a second language environment.

More than 25 years of AKMB-news: one way to reflect the work within art and museum libraries

This article describes some important steps within the history of the journal AKMB-news, published in cooperation with the board of the AKMB, and dedicated to subjects of the day-to-day work: information about the arts, museums and libraries. The author is founding member of the AKMB and a member of its editorial board since 1995.

Documentary heritage in the Arab region: a regional survey

In 2018, the UNESCO Office to the Gulf States and Yemen and its partner, Qatar National Library, launched a project aiming at supporting the preservation of documentary heritage in the Arab region. The Arab region is home to a unique and rich documentary heritage subject to risk due to natural decay, conflicts and instability. To support its preservation, this project had for objective to better understand the needs and challenges faced by documentary heritage institutions in the region though a mapping exercise and the dissemination of a survey.This article outlines the key outcomes of the survey including the situation of documentary heritage at the regional and national level, a brief review of legal frameworks protecting documentary heritage, the main obstacles and threats to documentary heritage preservation and the needs expressed by conservation practitioners in terms of capacity-building, professional development, infrastructure and support in additional areas such as policy and advocacy.

Fehras Publishing Practices: an email interview

Gustavo Grandal Montero (ALJ): The three of you founded Fehras Publishing Practices in 2015 in Berlin and since then have been working together in a series of long-term art projects focused on archives and publishing. Collectives, collaboration and networks are central to your practice, how much is this connected to an expanded understanding of publishing as a quintessentially collaborative cultural activity?

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunst- und Museumsbibliotheken (AKMB): a strong alliance of art and museum libraries

More than 25 years after the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunst- und Museumsbibliotheken (AKMB) was founded – an eternity in the digital age – libraries and museums as institutions of public life are more than ever subject to fundamental transformation.The AKMB has set itself the task of offering its affiliated institutions a platform for knowledge exchange and networking. Questions about standardization in librarianship, technical equipment, formal and subject indexing as well as possibilities of exchange and support in answering these questions are in focus. It is not - in the classic sense of a library - a physical place. Nevertheless, it forms simultaneously the basis and the opportunity for art and museum libraries to orient themselves to a digital future. In this regard, it also deals itself with structural changes and its challenges.

Sound in the archive: Media materials as archives of narrative

This paper describes and evaluates research undertaken by the author at the State Library of Queensland, in the collection, cataloguing, and presentation of audiovisual materials—specifically, sound materials beyond oral history and performance. It suggests that strategies drawn from transcription can make the sounds of the past more evident in digitised catalogues, and thus can make those sounds themselves more accessible to the public. In doing so it offers a different affordance of the archive to public experience: not just information about the past, but the affective impact of the past.