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The aim of this study is to investigate how the information needs satisfaction of visual art teachers affects their creativity. Visual art teachers’ information seeking behaviour and specifically the association of information needs satisfaction with creativity has been an understudied area, despite competent information seeking being considered essential for high quality practices of art teachers.

A questionnaire survey was developed addressing the information seeking behaviour of art teachers, informed by Wilson’s model (1981), including visual art teachers’ information needs, information resources, obstacles faced while seeking information and the perceived impact of information needs satisfaction on visual art teachers’ creativity.

The study included 298 visual art teachers in Greece. The results demonstrated that the key information needs of art teachers were mainly related to materials’ properties, techniques for creating artwork and artwork promotion methods. Online information sources were the preferred sources of art information, followed by colleagues, personal collections and visits to galleries and museums. Our study identified lack of time, lack of specialized libraries and copyright, as the main barriers to information seeking.

Information about art plays a substantial role in visual art education, while visual art teachers’ information needs satisfaction positively influences their creative endeavours. There is a need to further explore the digital information needs of visual art teachers.

Information makes an important contribution to the promotion of the creativity of visual artists. This work aims to explore relevant research through a systematic review of the literature and discuss the impact of information on visual artists' creativity.

A systematic literature review was conducted through Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses method. The authors searched and retrieved 1,320 papers from which, after evaluation, 41 papers have been analyzed.

Two thematic categories were identified for visual artists' information needs: (1) the need for professional development and (2) the need for creative techniques and materials. In terms of information sources visual artists employ, the authors have also identified seven broad categories: (1) conventional resources (galleries, museums, etc.), (2) professional scholar sources, (3) digital art websites, (4) informal information online and colleagues, (5) libraries, (6) personal collections and (7) professional scholar social networks. In addition, the study proceeded to classify the obstacles faced by visual artists in their search for visual information into two general categories: (1) environmental barriers and (2) digital literacy barriers.

Although the investigation of the information needs satisfaction of visual artists as well as the evaluation of their information behavior patterns and information literacy competences is essential, it is understudied. This paper summarizes the relevant literature in a concrete and systematic way providing evidences to be considered in a variety of situations, i.e. developing lifelong learning programs, managing visual art library collections, library services development for artists, etc.