Definizione e catalogazione del libro d’artista: limiti, tentativi e il caso Edcat

«Do we need, once again, to define the artist’s book? [...] it is as if [...] to every exhibition, to every article, you have to incessantly start saying what the artist’s book is not, rather than saying what it is». With these words Anne Moeglin-Delcroix introduced Guardare, raccontare, pensare, conservare: quattro percorsi del libro d’artista dagli anni ’60 ad oggi, an important exhibition and cataloguing work presented in Mantua in 2004. Starting from the inevitability of a exhaustive definition, the contribution takes a look at some attempts to catalog this editorial type, with reference to universally parameters and tools, as the standard ISBD, and it proposes as case study Edcat, the online database, dedicated to the publishing of artist and art, selected for instrumental reasons, operation and purpose. The plurality of services that Edcat provides allows us to rethink the concept of cataloguing the artist’s book and therefore its complex definition, in the wake of the artistic and critic instances of the sixties and seventies in which it is rooted.