Balancing the Creative and Professional

While a solid fine art and art history library collection will certainly support design programs to some extent, there will be other needs as well that are specific to these disciplines. The work of faculty and students in the applied arts programs of interior and fashion design is both creative and practical, thus it can be difficult to identify how research occurs within the creative process and what resources designers will require. Librarians need to be resourceful to support design students and faculty because qualitative reviews are rare and very little has been written on collection development in support of design and applied arts programs.