Positioning the Library as a Strategic Partner to Enrich the Campus Experience Through Art

Academic libraries are centres that promote research excellence, offering resources for their communities to help consider the world around us. Artists use their form of creative expression to raise questions about life and to interpret the human condition. Art has the power to enrich the academic environment through new and alternate ways of representing scholarship, helping to make research appealing and more accessible to a variety of audiences. The Library can be a catalyst to propel this goal forward, helping students navigate university life, building a bridge with internal and external communities, and informing faculty research in new and meaningful ways.The author has over twenty years of experience as an academic librarian engaged in positioning libraries to be active partners in the enrichment of the campus experience through art. This paper briefly explores the emergence of regional and national collaborations among galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) in Canada and around the world while considering the role of the academic library within these partnerships. The paper shares experiences of intentional art-centred space and service design including: relationship building with the campus art gallery and other appropriate academic departments, embracing the flexibility of library space, rethinking traditional library and archival resources to inspire artists in the academic community, and supporting faculty and students with explorations in the area of arts-informed research and scholarship.