LADA’s Study Room: A case study in five parts

The Live Art Development Agency’s (LADA)’s Study Room is the world’s largest publicly accessible Live Art library, holding more than 7,000 books, DVDs, journals and digital files that are free to use and that can be accessed as physical, online and touring resources. Located in London, the Study Room is also a space for events, screenings and reading groups, enhancing engagement with the ideas that our holdings provoke. LADA hosts Study Room residencies with artists, writers, academics and PhD candidates of different forms and durations. We are increasingly developing Study Room initiatives that exist, and encourage access, beyond the physical library. This article looks at the Study Room as a case study of how libraries can perform in response to performance, and what their performance can do for performance. Parts 1 and 2 by LADA are framing sections, describing the background, context and activities of the Study Room, including Study Room Guides, the Study Room on tour, the Study Room in Exile and the Study Room online. Part 3 by Marco Pustianaz, 4 by Mary Paterson and 5 by Tara Fatehi Irani are more performative, reflecting the impact of the Study Room on research and practice. Marco Pustianaz has revisited, and selected extracts from, his 2008 Study Room Guide In Search of a ‘Documentology’. Walking around (half) the Study Room. In This is Where Life Happens Mary Paterson writes about the Study Room’s influence on critical thinking and critical discourses, while for Floating Nodes Tara Fatehi Irani has created a diagram mapping Study Room-related artists, ideas and connections.