How can arts librarians support learners at a distance in using electronic library services? At the Open University (OU), electronic resources, web design, training and personal contact all play a part in supporting students over a wide geographical area. This article looks at the past, present and future of electronic library services to support distance learners, focusing on the dynamic role of the arts subject librarian.

Two libraries, the National Institute of the Arts at the Australian National University and California Institute of the Arts in Southern California, describe how each has an interdependent relationship with the information technology or network services units in their respective institutions. Major considerations for both are the introduction of electronic full-text art information on the Web and its pedagogical implications, issues faced by arts libraries in the integration of computer services with library services in universities and colleges, and the changing roles of arts librarians and libraries.

Following the work of ADAM, the Art, Design, Architecture and Media Information Gateway, was there scope for a new Resource Discovery Network (RDN) hub to support those studying the subject areas of the creative arts and industries within higher education? CALIM, the Consortium of Academic Libraries in Manchester, undertook a six-month consultancy to identify the thoughts of the arts and education communities within the United Kingdom.

Co-operation, collaboration and interoperability meet in BOOKHAD to deliver a research resource which offers a new arrangement of key material through the use of modern technology. The essence of BOOKHAD is sharing a range of material to support scholars of book history and book design, in a focused, illustrated and subject-orientated way. The vision of the project is to provide richer access to selected resources for a community of book historians and designers than was available to them before this nationally-funded project was undertaken.

This paper evaluates the access provided to electronic reference material in art libraries in Germany and elsewhere. The extremely heterogenous state of education and knowledge concerning these materials is discussed, both from the point of view of library staff and that of the specialised public. Finally a proposal is formulated for a co-operative way of giving access to at least the metadata of these resources, and for their thematic indexing.

Electronic retrieval of information is only one of the many aspects of librarianship seen by delegates on the recent ARLIS/UK & Ireland study tour of art libraries in Germany. Diverse in their history and development, these are today being drawn together into a supportive web of co-operation through technological innovation and professional partnerships.

In a Herculean effort to distribute information about art collections on a previously unknown scale, museums, arts organizations, libraries, and archives have been hard at work developing standards and implementing testbed projects, large-scale union databases which integrate and disseminate information. Two such projects are ‘Conceptual and Intermedia Online’ (CIAO) and ‘Museums and the Online Archive of California’ (MOAC), both using the Encoded Archival Description to describe and provide access to art and other cultural collections. But what is the future of such collaborations and the content portals they spawn? Will they be able to scale up to include hundreds or thousands of institutions, using current models? What are the limitations for such consortia? What are the limitations for participating institutions? Several options appear on the horizon, and one simple need suggests looking to decentralization, and back to the individual institution, for the solution to sharing art and cultural content on a truly vast scale.