Digital History - Histoire Numérique

University of Ottawa Artist Book Collection Page

The Archives and Special Collections unit distinguish themselves from other archival institutions by emphasizing the fact that they make their entire collection as a learning resource to the academic community. They are located in Room 039 in the Basement of Morisset Library. Within (ARCS) is a small but potentially useful collection of 44 artist books. This collection includes artist books that fall in line with Johanna Drucker and the Getty Institute’s definition, as well as finely illustrated books, exhibit catalogues, and retrospectives of an artist or art movement’s works. These sources are grouped together in ARCS because they are similar in nature, and help contextualize one-another.

Before 2012, few written records on the acquisition of artist books exist, leading to a lack of certainty in the provenience of books in the artist book collection acquired before that year. Because of the presence of one or multiple “University of Ottawa Library” stamps in a significant number of books in this collection, it is believed that many of the books in the collection were transferred from the University Library’s main collection. The rest were likely acquired by donation, since artist books can be expensive to purchase and ARCS’ ability to purchase new materials is often limited by available funding.

N.B: Although the use of stamps and other inscriptions can help track and date library and archival materials, they are rarely conclusive on their own and require extra research.

Artist books from the main collection were likely transferred to ARCS when a librarian recognized that they did not belong on the main shelves due to their abnormal format, delicate state, high value, or contents. The practicing artist and librarian Roxanne Lafleur believes that to be considered an artist book, the work must stay in their original format – and not have been modified to withstand long-term handling. Although the more artisanal, hand-made books are easy to identify, commercially printed artist books are more likely to have slipped through the cracks.

Today, whenever librarians like Lafleur come across a book that could be considered as an artist book, they inform the Archives unit, who are ultimately responsible for deciding whether or not they should be responsible for the care of the book.

When you analyse the ARCS artist book collection as a whole, some interesting trends pop up:

Gender of Attributed Creators: There are 67 attributed “creators” (artists, poets, authors etc...) for the 44 artist books in the ARCS collection, and nearly 2/3 of them were men. This statistic isn’t too suprising, since almost a third of the books were produced before 1970 and the serious integration of women into the workforce. It is important to note that sometimes, illustrators, photographers, and writers were not credited for their contributions.

Year of Publication, by Decade: Over 33% of the collection was published during the 1970s, and another 20% during the 1960s. The fact that over half of the collection was published during this time is hardly surprising. These two decades were the medium’s heyday and it would have been the time where the most artists were experimenting with it. What is surprising, is the fact that there are more books from the 1970s than the 1960s, since it was the latter who specialized in large-scale production, or the creation of democratic multiples.

Distribution of Languages: Nearly 65% of the collection is written in French, and both English and Bilingual books are tied at 16% of the collection. It is important to note that “Bilingual” means published in two or more different languages, which are not necessarily French and English. This also includes German, Italian, and Japanese. It was not possible to determine the language of book in the collection, but it was almost certainly English and/or French.

uOttawa Collection