Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:47:25.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘A grapevine round the world’: the development, through 25 years, of the international role of ARLIS/UK & Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Philip Pacey*
Affiliation:
The Library, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Get access

Abstract

Between 1969 and 1979, while it was establishing itself, ARLIS attracted the attention of art librarians in other countries, publicised and encouraged their activities, and in particular developed a close relationship with the new ARLIS/NA (ARLIS/North America). This phase culminated, in 1976, in the launch of the Art Libraries Journal, and in the organisation of an international conference at Brighton which inaugurated a new era of collaboration between art librarians around the world, initial plans for an ‘ARLIS International’ being put aside in favour of working within the framework of IFLA. ARLIS subsequently participated in the activities of the IFLA Round Table of Art Librarians and its successor, the IFLA Section of Art Libraries. More recently, ARLIS responded to the growth of an international community of art librarians by changing its name to ARLIS/UK & Eire (and later to ARLIS/UK & Ireland) and by relaunching the Art Libraries Journal; the winding up of its International Committee, far from representing a decline in the Society’s international activities, was a logical consequence of the fact that an international outlook had come to pervade virtually all of its work. ARLIS/UK & Eire hosted the IFLA Section of Art Libraries Pre-Conference at Brighton in 1987, and the Section’s Fourth European Conference, at Oxford, in 1992. While international activities may sometimes seem remote from the day-to-day work of art libraries, most British art librarians probably do now recognise the value of’a grapevine round the world’; furthermore, by ‘acting locally’ we are all helping to build the larger world of art librarianship.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Davis, Alexander. ‘Some recent developments in art librarianship in the United States’. ARLIS Newsletter no. 3 April 1970, p.79 Google Scholar.

2. ARLIS Newsletter no. 11 July 1972, p.23.

3. ARLIS Newsletter no. 13 December 1972, p.23.

4. Laureilhe, M-T.Art Libraries Society: Londres’. Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France vol. 17 no. 1 January 1972 Google Scholar, Section 174.

5. Fawcett, Trevor. ‘The compleat art librarian; or, what it takes’. ARLIS Newsletter no. 22 March 1975, p.79 Google Scholar; reprinted in A reader in art librarianship. Munich: K. G. Saur, 1985, p.18-21.

6. Matthews, John. ‘ARLIS International Working Party: report on the year 1976-1977’. ARLIS Newssheet no. 6 April 1977, p.67 Google Scholar.

7. Williams, Richard, ‘IFLA Conference, Leipzig, August 1981’. ARLIS News-sheet no. 32 October 1981, p.35 Google Scholar.

8. Sheridan, Ian. An art librarian’s glossary. IFLA Section of Art Libraries, 1984 Google Scholar.

9. Pacey, Philip. ‘International Working Party. Annual Report 1983/84’. ARLIS News-sheet no. 47 March 1984, p.910 Google Scholar.

10. Pacey, Philip. ‘“A spider ready to bounce [sic]”: an introduction to IFLA and to the IFLA Section of Art Libraries’. ARLIS News-sheet no. 48 May 1984, p.36 Google Scholar.

11. Pacey, Philip. ‘Excuse me, Library Association, but your chauvinism is showing’. Library Association Record vol. 89 no. 8 August 1987, p.420 Google Scholar.

12. Phillpot, Clive. ‘The social role of the art library’. Art Documentation December 1983, p.177 Google Scholar; reprinted in A reader in art librarianship. Munich: K. G. Saur, 1985, p.112-115.

13. Esteve-Coll, Elizabeth. ‘Image and reality: the National Art Library’. Art Libraries Journal vol. 11 no. 2 1986, p.3339 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. It seems that the Working Party laboured for several years without formal terms of reference. In the Working Party’s Annual Report for 1984-85, printed in ARLIS News-sheet no. 53, 1984, I included a ‘note [of] the Working Party’s objectives as they have evolved in practice’. These were the terms of reference which were passed on to the Committee.

15. Houghton, Beth. ‘Chair’s Annual Report 1988-89’. ARLIS/UK & Eire Directory 1989, p.10 Google Scholar.

16. Molinaro, Mary. ‘ARLIS-L: networked information for art information professionals’. Art Libraries Journal vol. 18 no. 3, p.2527 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.