‘A national art library’: if every one of these four words raises questions and demands qualification, together they suggest even more.

Art is so elusive and resistant to institutionalisation that no single library - ‘a’ national art library - could possibly have the omniscience and omnipresence (never mind the money) to collect everything: to take a UK example, how many libraries managed to collect the Freeze (1988) exhibition catalogue at the time? And who collected the ‘programme note’ from that one-off performance in a half-derelict warehouse in Penge? Co-operation and collaboration in collection development are needed to maximise the research resources available in any particular nation, to ensure the retention of last or archival copies - and any national art library must surely have a role in this. However, this just sets up a chain of secondary problems - with access and funding at the top of the list. Individual institutions ultimately have their own agendas and priorities: and this even applies to national institutions, where existing collection strengths may skew collecting priorities. Perhaps we have to accept an incomplete but vibrant mosaic: the librarian’s desire for comprehensiveness and universal bibliographic control cannot be achieved in the real world.

Much is made of the way in which technology has transformed libraries – as indeed it has; but not out of all recognition and not particularly markedly as yet in the case of art libraries. We still seem to have a fewbooks around; we may be becoming acutely aware of the perils of the e-journal but most of us haven’t actually got many of them yet; I suspect that we talk more about digitisation than we digitise; and many of the materials which are specific to art libraries are likely to be well back in the queue for transformation.

A new state-of-the-art fine arts complex for our College will soon open and it includes an Imaging Center: a physical environment that will support activities related to the teaching and research use of images. A parallel building project is happening simultaneously: the development of digital content and tools to enable imaging across the campus. The bricks and mortar effort will soon result in a spectacular sunrise. As far as content and tools go, we’re still in the deepest dark before dawn, i.e. we’re not there yet. As one faculty member put it, ‘That’s nice, but now what I really need …’. These few words speak volumes about user expectations and the extraordinary effort it takes to meet them.

This paper looks at the way architecture students at Queen’s University are educated in the art of information retrieval from their undergraduate to their postgraduate years. Particular emphasis is paid to the role the librarian plays in the first year project to research, and produce a model of, a seminal building and to the development of PADDI (Planning Architecture Design Database Ireland) as a teaching tool for researching local architecture. The impact on library management is examined in relation to effective deployment of decreasing staff resources in the face of increasing student numbers; the raising of the profile of library staff within the Faculty; the more focused allocation of budgets through involvement with course planning; and the growth of new services, arising from an improved awareness of student needs.

More than 20 million images are to be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in the form of book and periodical illustrations, manuscript illuminations, maps and plans, prints, drawings and photographs. The editorial context of these images means they are to be found in all fourteen collections departments of the library. However, it is the department of Prints and Photographs that, thanks to legal deposit for published images instituted in the 17th century, possesses one of the richest iconographic collections in the world: prints, posters, drawings, photographs, postcards, etc. These images have to be consulted in the reading rooms of the library’s different collection departments, which are at five different sites (François-Mitterrand (Tolbiac), Richelieu, Arsenal, Opéra, Avignon - Maison Jean Vilar). The introduction of digitisation should bring many changes to this traditional means of research, although we are still only at the beginning, with a programme that started little more than ten years ago.

Art and art history resources on the Web abound. Yet the process of identifying scholarly art information online is typically inefficient, leading many researchers to abandon Internet sources for traditional printed reference works. Locating websites that focus specifically on art and art history timelines can be an even greater challenge: these resources simply have not been available on the Web in any large number or degree of comprehensiveness. In recent years, however, new Web-based art timelines have been published, most notably by art educators, museums and other non-profit organizations. This evaluative webliography of selected art and art history timelines not only highlights the variety of resources that are currently available, but also illustrates that the majority of these Web resources focus upon the art of the Western world.

Archives, libraries and museums have for some time been trying out the advantages, for themselves and for each other, of working together and sharing long-term aims. These independent sorties were given a coercive impetus in April 2000 when the Government-funded Library & Information Commission and the Museums & Galleries Commission were replaced by the single-word Resource, to bring together ‘strategic advocacy, leadership and advice to enable museums, archives and libraries to touch people’s lives and inspire their imagination, learning and creativity’. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Art Library, which already included the Museum’s Archives, has recently merged with Prints, Drawings and Paintings to form the Word & Image Department. The integration of the National Art Library with a department that has traditionally put greater emphasis on its curatorial role has suggested new paths of development for us all and, in particular, an enhanced contribution for the new Department across the full range of material culture as represented in the V&A’s collections. Thus the merger has acted as a catalyst to put into practice aspects of the Government’s agenda within a single institution. This article outlines some of the developments proposed for the Word & Image Department, with particular emphasis on implications for the National Art Library, its staff, collections and users.

‘Oh no, not another image database to review!’ That was a familiar thought that often crossed my mind when I was studying Computer Applications for the History of Art, and now I find myself responsible for a national image repository and have to subject audiences far and wide to it. However, I’d like to think this one is a little bit special and pretty unique, even on a global scale, particularly because it is essentially a community-produced resource, ensconced within a ‘total-service’ philosophy and environment. Although other parties, primarily within UK higher education, create the database’s informational and image content, VADS ‘standards and good practice’ guidance often supports the creation of that content. This holistic methodology aims to facilitate a smooth process from resource planning to delivery, providing many benefits to both data creators and end-users.

Lecturers and librarians are often working separately to achieve the same goal: facilitating student learning. This paper describes a workshop that addresses these issues, examines tradition and practice that reinforce the separation and identifies strategies for closer collaboration.

An exhibition entitled Eye (Level) Chart reviewed the twenty year history of Eye Level Gallery, an artist-run centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The temporal history of the Gallery was presented as a chronological gallery display of exhibition announcements, posters and graphic ephemera. More than a mere summary of exhibitions, significant social and cultural information was revealed through the charting of promotional materials that were astutely archived over a twenty-year period.

The National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London has always seen itself as primarily an educational institution, with training as an integral part of its fabric. There are two fundamental strands to this training the provision of training by our librarians to the users, and the training the staff receive in order to develop and better perform their jobs.

This article is a sales pitch for pictures, even though art librarians already value visual materials highly. A decade’s advances in online access at a major documentary picture provider, the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division, should encourage librarians to visit the online United States national library often, and also to offer more of their own collections through the World Wide Web. Despite the beneficial digital image navigation features introduced into the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), many improvements are still needed and there is a long list of desirable future developments. Reference librarians, catalogers, curators, digital conversion specialists and web designers are all invited to contribute to online reference aids as well as online catalogs, to help people succeed more often in finding pictures.

During the Renaissance and Baroque periods temporary festival monuments, architectural works, fireworks, and table pieces were designed for the time of celebrations and were destroyed or torn down at the ceremony’s end. Memories of these works live on in the books and prints published as historic accounts, souvenirs, and reports for those at a distance who were unable to attend. Now held in library and archival collections, these works on paper are indispensable sources for researchers who seek to describe and to interpret the transitory and disposable, yet extraordinary, art of festivals.

The title is taken from the Tate Board Minutes in 1929, where it was suggested that such a woman might offer to make a subject catalogue and new card index ‘without pecuniary remuneration’. It sums up the approach taken to the early development of the library within the gallery setting. The library’s position has always been determined by the Tate’s fortunes and reliant on the support of directors whose agendas were broader than the provision of a research library. This article, which is condensed from an MA dissertation, demonstrates how these varying agendas have affected the resources that have been available to the library and the corresponding effects on its collection and culture.

ArtSTOR is a digital imaging initiative of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ArtSTOR seeks to create digital image collections that respond to the needs of scholars, curators, teachers and students in the history of art and related fields of study. As a public utility, it also aims to create a secure, regulated, networked space, defined by a framework of licensing agreements that embraces content providers, subscribers and service administrators - a precinct in which educational and scholarly activities can flourish in ways that simultaneously respect intellectual property rights and encourage the ‘fair use’ of digital media.

The Hyman Kreitman Research Centre for the Tate Library and Archive opened at Tate Britain in May 2002. The Library (covering those areas collected by the Gallery) and the Archive (covering British art since 1900) together constitute a centre of excellence for the study of modern art, particularly British. The new Centre, comprising storage for up to 20 years and reading rooms for around 40 people, has been built in a refurbished area of Tate Britain. The design aimed to comply with BS5454 and issues of compact storage, security, reading rooms without daylight, fire and flood hazards have been addressed.

Subject access to physical or electronic resource collections can be divided into two complementary areas: searching and browsing. Searching involves the use of subject headings, indexing terms from a controlled vocabulary, or natural language keywords. Browsing, whether along a shelf or through a subject tree on the Web, requires the application of some kind of taxonomy or classification scheme. This article looks at what class schemes art libraries are using to arrange their book collections in the UK today. Based on an informal survey via the ARLIS e-mail discussion list, it appears that the Dewey Decimal Classification is not only the most commonly used class scheme, but the one most art libraries choose when they reclassify their library.

The importance of the creative process at Cirque du Soleil informed the establishment of its Documentation Centre nine years ago. The desire for conservation, a concern of the founding president as early as 1984, was initially related to the need to use earlier documents and materials in the creation of shows, rather than a desire to preserve history. Subsequently, the role of the archives has evolved and today Cirque du Soleil values the importance of memory and has put various tools in place to facilitate the collection and conservation of its history.