How do artists, designers, architects and craftspeople seek and deploy information in support of their practice? It is a question that is of central importance to the learning and teaching that art libraries provide, yet one that has also been subject to much debate within the historical and contemporary literature. An attentive reading of this literature reveals three fundamental metanarratives, each underpinned by a particular epistemology, and it is these narratives that have then informed how institutions construct, embed and assess the teaching of information skills to their readers. Only by critically evaluating the literature is it possible to resituate our own practice and that of our respective institutions within a paradigm that is most appropriate for our particular contexts. It is also possible to identify gaps in our collective professional understanding, in the hope of signposting avenues of research potential for the future.