This project is designed to create an online resource to promote research, study, and access to artists' books.
The project has several aims:
• to make difficult to access, distributed materials accessible online
• to promote critical discussion through the use of structured metadata, particularly by prompting artists, scholars, critics, and others to analyze books with respect to their design features and dynamic properties
• to create a networked database that will provide an overview of production and collection patterns in the field
• to foster interpretative work in the field of artists' books
To that end the project is hosted at the University of Virginia as part of the Digital Library. The project has an ad hoc advisory board composed of professional librarians involved in acquisition and collection development and of book artists active in the field.
Contributions to the site are invited as submissions. These are reviewed before they are posted. Artists wishing to put their work up on the site will need to work with the UVa research group to be sure they use the right standards for files and other materials. Submissions will not be edited for content without authors' permission or knowledge. But as in any peer-reviewed publication, recommendations for changes and professional codes of editing will be followed.