Edinburgh College of Art Artist Books

Abstract

The ECA Library began actively collecting artists’ books in the 1980s. The earliest books in the collection date back to the 1960s, for example Ed Ruscha’s Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, a now iconic paperback book. The collection is situated in the ECA Library at Evolution House, where there are also regular displays featuring the collection. The collection consists of c.1500 artists’ books. It is a working and handling collection, and is used regularly in group tutorials. Students and staff can also request individual artist’s books for reference in the Library. The collection is strong on Scottish artists such as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Helen Douglas, Jane Hyslop, Jenny Smith, Susie Wilson and Susie Leiper, but is also international in scope, including works by Hans Waanders, Maddy Rosenberg, and the works of Redfoxpress (featuring European contributors in the C’est mon dada series, and the works of Francis van Maele and Franticham). The collection also includes book-works by ECA students acquired from the annual ECA degree shows. The dataset is provided in JSON and XNL format. For more information please see www.ed.ac.uk/is/crc or email is-crc@ed.ac.uk