Print on Demand photo books have finally made their way into the museum world, with an exceptional presentation at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Until now, limited edition artist books have been the mainstay of art book fairs, photo festivals, book arts centers, and holiday gift fairs.

The museum’s curator of photography, Barbara Tannenbaum, has tapped into a subject that not only engages photographers but also museum-goers, many of whom are onto making books of their own photographs on the numerous sites that have cropped up on the Web.

The exhibition consists of a narrow, 65-foot-long table lined by a dozen or so chairs, set in a long, high-ceilinged gallery. On the table are 157 books by artists from nine countries and 29 U.S. states. Although a small number of books—arranged together because they are from the same photographer—are tethered to the table, most of are free to move about the room. Several photographers also have framed images from their books mounted on the gallery walls.

Photo: David Brichford, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“It’s very different from almost every other display in the museum,” Tannenbaum says. “You can handle all the art. And it’s very inexpensive. If you like it, you can buy it.” Most of the books in DIY are available for sale, ranging from a few bucks to a couple of hundred. If a book isn’t out of print, a QR code is included on the inside back cover, allowing an interested buyer the opportunity to zap it with his or her smartphone and be directed to the appropriate website where the volume can be purchased.

Photographers embracing print-on-demand use companies such as Blurb, Lulu, MagCloud and even Apple and Shutterfly—some of the same companies used by regular folks to create wedding albums and the like. “It’s a medium that almost everybody has seen or has some experience with, and they can now see here what artists are doing with it,” Tannenbaum says.

“For the artists of our time, despite the omnipresence of the web, books seem to hold greater significance than ever, she writes in the exhibition catalogue. “These small-scale multiples are priced much lower, and therefore are less elitist than paintings, sculptures, prints, and ‘original’ fine art photographs. Portable and easily shipped, they have been and continue to be the most effective means of disseminating high quality images—and the information, thoughts, and emotions contained in them—to a broader audience.”

One of the artists with multiple books in the show, she adds, is Stephen Shore, who became interested in print on demand in 2003 after discovering that Apple’s iPhoto software helped create such works. He created 83 smaller books—with 15 or so images each—between 2003 and 2008. [Note: The entire set has been collected in a limited edition two-volume set published by Phaidon, titled The Book of Books.]

Another artist, Mishka Henner, created a 12-volume work titled ASTRONOMICAL, each book boasting one letter of the title on its side. Seen together, the pages take the reader through the entire solar system. With each double-page spread representing 2 million kilometers of space, most spreads depict a black void.

Among the internationally known photographers whose books are represented in this exhibition are Larry Fink, Paula McCartney, Martin Parr, and Stephen Shore, to name a few.

“We believe that in a multicultural, globalized world the photo book is one of the privileged mediums,” states the web site of Pierre von Kleist Editions, an artist-run publisher in Lis­bon, Portugal. “The language of sequential images is, perhaps, today’s most international language, understood by the large majority of the world population. Photo books don’t need translation; they need world distribution. The Internet provides an efficient, accessible way for books to reach global audiences.”

“Very, very exciting work is happening in this medium,” says Tannenbaum, adding that the idea wasn’t a tough one to sell to others at the museum. “Actually, everybody seems to think it’s a really good idea whose time has come.”

DIY: Photographers & Books continues through December 30, 2012 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH. Information.