The big debate about what a book is will continue to rage as eBooks start dominating the landscape. But what about libraries? What are they? Jacket Copy explores:
The University of Virginia hosts a library — or gallery — called Artists’ Books Online. It’s a highly academic resource that includes “facsimiles, metadata, and criticism.” It’s also got a lot of pretty pictures.
Artists’ books are, generally, books made by people in the world of visual arts who have taken the book/book-like object on as an art form. They gained enough traction so that “The Journal of Art Books,” which undertook the “creative exploration of the intersections of book arts, artists’ books, poetry, photography, experimental literature, and other book-related creative endeavors,” was launched in 1994. The journal, published twice a year until 2003, and all its issues have found a home on the Artists’ Books Online website. All these issues, along with a wide range of the works themselves, appear on the website. [more...]
