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 provided by creative arts libraries, yet one that has also been subject to much debate within the historical and contemporary literature. This short paper is abstracted from a comprehensive literature review, published in 2017, that critically evaluated the paradigms that have been deployed within creative arts libraries, and how these paradigms have shifted in the light of changing learning styles and needs. We shall see that an attentive reading of the literature reveals three fundamental metanarratives, each underpinned by a particular epistemology, and it is these narratives that have then informed how our institutions construct, embed and assess the teaching of information skills to our 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.