On a more local level, perhaps some had a chance to go to the New York Art Book Fair several weekends ago? The fair at PS1 comprised roughly 200 publishers and artists that make and distribute books. Over 16000 people attended the fair and it was vital and full of materials that represent the full spectrum of what we can call artists' publications. Go to the book fair's website - scroll through the participants and discover an international culture of independent art publishing and diverse artists that rely on this medium to make their work (http://nyartbookfair.com/exhibitors). Again, this is print culture at its most intrinsic level. In many cases, these types of artists' works - take the generation of books by conceptual artists of the 60s and 70s - become primary documents of ephemeral artists practices like performances, street interventions and sound pieces.There is, in my opinion, nothing mysterious about it or the idea that libraries, especially art libraries should be documenting this phenomenon in some fashion.

Perhaps more "mysterious" for me, as a bibliographer at an art institution, is to figure out a coherent strategy of collecting from the output of hulking corporate conglomerates of print media in the subject areas that are represented in my museum's collections. This material is what give me pause - not the direct print (or digital!) output of artists, publisher's producing innovative little books, and art spaces dedicated to experimental documentation of exhibitions and projects.

Of course, there are collection guidelines and preservation issues for particular media that involve other departments in a museum setting. I think librarians are pretty of aware of objects in library holdings that may need to be reassigned to other departments - this happened in a very interresting way at the MoMA library during our accessioning of Fluxus printed material from the recently acquired Silverman collection.

In sum, there is obviously a bit of an ambiguity when we discuss artists' books - what is it we are describing...I often have no idea what something is even when I am holding it in my hands! But, I think one thing that an art librarian should recognize (and take pride in!) - particularly one that manages collections of modern and contemporary art history - is that the entire history of movements and individual art practices of the 20th and 21st centuries can be traced through the history of little books, periodicals and ephemera produced by artists themselves or collective groups. From Duchamp's Blind Man, Wyndham Lewis' Blast to the photoconceptualisms of Ed Rusha, Hans Peter-Feldmann or John Baldessari, Lucy Lippard's innovative "exhibition catalogs" 557,087 and 995,000 to Dexter Sinister's heady Dot Dot Dot or the feminist/queer artists' periodical LTTR, we have a full constellation of art historical markers that tell a compellling and thorough story of avant garde practices via these publications.