The Centre for Newfoundland Studies, a division of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Libraries, has as its mandate to collect all material possible on all aspects of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Centre’s collections of both published and manuscript materials will be of interest to researchers of the art and architecture of Newfoundland. While the Centre is primarily a reference collection, information services are provided to remote researchers. Researchers may wish to access the Centre’s catalogues and bibliographic tools, including its own Newfoundland periodical article bibliography, from the Centre’s web site.

Literature on folk art of the Atlantic region, with few exceptions, would be nonexistent without the intervention of visual arts institutions and museums. The interest in folk art and folk art collecting by museums and galleries, and the institutions’ penchant for documentation, has generated a diversity of written and visual material on the subject, of both an historical and a contemporary nature, which unveils a regional portrait of artists and their work.

In over three-quarters of a century since Harry Piers read his paper ‘Artists in Nova Scotia’ before the Nova Scotia Historical Society, there has been no comprehensive publication about the history of art in Nova Scotia. An unpublished typescript does exist, however, written by Donald Cameron Mackay in the 1970s. This text is being developed for publication to make it available for study and to serve as groundwork for further research.

‘A historical dictionary of artists in Atlantic Canada’ is the first attempt to systematically develop the contours of four hundred years of visual arts in Atlantic Canada since the hegemony of Western European civilization. The project entails the development of a data base of biographical and professional information on artists born prior to 1939 and the beginning of the Second World War who were active in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada — New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The definition of ‘artist’ has been as broadly defined as possible to include craft persons, photographers, architects nor has there been an attempt to limit the definitions to ‘professionals’. The data is stored in a ‘FileMaker Pro’ programme using a Macintosh computer.

Although the Library of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) can trace its history to the origins of the College itself, its metamorphosis into a modern library began in 1972 when two professional librarians were hired to establish a library resource to match the expanding programs of the College. John Murchie was hired as Director of the Library and Mary Snyder was hired as the Slide Librarian. Largely through their efforts and those of the library staff, the NSCAD Library has grown to become the premier library collection for the visual arts and design in Atlantic Canada. As a member of the Novanet consortium of university libraries, the NSCAD Library has joined the ranks of Nova Scotia universities in offering a full-scale library service to its immediate community and to practising artists, academics, and the general public in the region.

The New Brunswick illustration index is an index to the illustrations in the Legislative Library’s New Brunswick Collection. The illustrations include photographs, engravings, woodcuts, etc. and each is described in a database entry comprised of ten distinct fields. The project, begun in 1989, is not yet complete. The Index is designed to make the unique New Brunswick Collection more accessible.