The Academy is one of Britain’s foremost cultural institutions. It is a unique survival of the age of enlightenment, continuing to fulfil the purposes for which it was founded. The Academy is run by artists for the benefit of artists, while providing an elegant venue for ‘the promotion of the arts of design’. The Library of the Royal Academy of Arts is well known, as it is the oldest fine art library in the United Kingdom. The Archives has always lain in comparative shadow, even though it is close to the heart of the institution. This article attempts to place the Archives in context, to describe how the institution has regarded it over time and how it is now being revealed to a wide public.

Tate is committed to attracting new audiences both within and beyond its galleries. Insight is a long-term programme which aims to develop online access to Tate’s Collection through digital imaging and related indexing and content initiatives. Following the successful digitisation of the Collection, Insight entered a second phase which included placing part of the Tate’s Archive Collection online for the first time.

Behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum is the world’s largest natural history library, with approximately one million printed books. But the crown jewels are the Library’s art collections, depicting rocks, minerals, fossils, plants and animals, and dating from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Its more than half a million individual items make this the largest collection of natural history art not only in the UK but in the world. Commercial exploitation of the collection has mostly been by publishers of books and journals, but others have seen opportunities for writing books about the illustrations, putting the art in exhibitions, printing the images on decorative items, and other marketing ventures. In 2003 the Library launched a website designed to promote the art collections further and make them accessible to a global audience.

In line with the national agenda for archives, the Britten-Pears Library is pursuing a strategy of making its collections better known and more accessible to a wider public. For a library with strong traditions, located in an isolated corner of coastal England, there are many challenges involved in embarking on this path and careful balances to be struck between the demands of security and access, innovation and tradition. This article outlines the progress made so far, and discusses some of the issues that have arisen along the way.

At the Tiré à part conference held in Quebec city in October 2003, speakers from artist-run centres from across Canada discussed 30 years of experience in publishing. Themes such as audience, production, funding, professionalisation and distribution encouraged the identification and exploration of current issues. These are put in context here by a general overview of the development of the genre as well as a short history of production by artist-run centres such as Art Metropole, Artspeak, Artexte and the Bookmobile project.