They support research, provide instruction, and promote public awareness of the arts to students, teachers, scholars, curators, artists, and others. The scope of their collections may include the entire field of visual culture or be focused on specialized areas such as art, design, film, indigenous creations, or photography. Art information professionals handle numerous formats including the printed page, slides, film, video, and electronic media. Art librarians and visual resources professionals are employed in a diversity of educational institutions such as public libraries, college and university libraries and art departments, art museums, fashion and design institutes, and art schools. They find employment in architecture and design firms, art galleries and book shops, picture research agencies, and corporate art collections.
Some professionals work for commercial indexing services and information brokers.
Art information professionals can also be found in archives, historical societies, and anthropological institutions which have collections of special visual interest. Art librarians and visual resources professionals perform a range of activities dedicated to the organization, retrieval, and distribution of information on the visual arts. These activities might include the provision of specialized reference and research service, the organization and cataloging of subject-specific collections, and the acquisition of materials in support of a visual arts program. Art information professionals carry out these responsibilities in many institutional settings. They may catalog slides for a university art department, conduct database searches for museum curators, manage an historical photographic collection, create and maintain a home page on the World Wide Web, or teach methods on a college campus.