ARLIS/UK & Eire has developed a thorough and practical strategy regarding the national provision of art serials in libraries. The keystone of this strategy is the ARLIS Union List of Art Periodicals, shortly to appear in its fourth edition. Titles of new serials are noted in the ARLIS News-sheet. Data in the Union List facilitates co-operation between, and co-ordination of the holdings of, different libraries, and is used in particular to identify those libraries which are the only locations for specific titles. ARLIS is determined that all art journals covered by the major indexes and abstracts are accessible in the U.K. and Eire; at the same time, the attention of publishers of indexes will be drawn to serials which are not indexed. ARLIS is represented on the advisory boards of major indexing and abstracting services, and in addition has completed a survey of ‘in-house’ indexes maintained by different libraries. Further developments are likely to depend, not merely on the co-operative efforts of members and on co-operation with other bodies, but also on the availability of funds and, hopefully, of a researcher.

Photographic collections are relatively undeveloped in Japan, although in the last decade a national photographic museum has been established, and other museums have opened departments of photography. Problems of access to collections of photographs of works of art have impeded the study of art history, but the capacity of new technologies to store, and to facilitate the retrieval of, visual images, is beginning to transform the situation.

A number of sources of inspiration and information, in addition to books on costume history, are invaluable to the fashion designer and the historian of fashion. They include predictions of style and market trends, visual sources of creative inspiration, and a variety of forms of historical evidence. Sources of information on style and market trends include forecasting services, trade magazines, newspapers, advertising material, and fashion magazines. Sources from which the designer can draw inspiration include paintings and visual imagery from the theatre, cinema, and popular culture. Historical evidence includes portrait paintings, fashion plates and magazines, photographs, literary sources, pattern books, and trade catalogues. Above all, magazines and serial-type publications are crucially important, for the sake of their currency, and later from a historical perspective; access to magazines is facilitated by indexing services.

During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of American artists have made use of clothing as an art medium. Their work constitutes a new art movement, drawing on, and straddling divisions between, Pop Art, performing arts, popular culture, and fashion; it merits more thorough and accessible documentation, and there is a need for art libraries to make available the elusive information which does exist.

The Union Française des Arts du Costume, founded in 1948, has been housed since 1986 in the new Musée des Arts de la Mode, and comprises collections of garments and accessories and of complementary documentation. Its Centre de Documentation, open to all, includes a library and archival collections of drawings, prints, photographs, and publicity material; a Centre de Consultation du vidéodisque facilitates access to both garments and documents while removing the need for rare and fragile materials to be handled. A videodisc on 20th century fashion has been available since 1987; a second videodisc is devoted to the 18th and 19th centuries. The thousands of images on videodisc are complemented by a database on BRS software.

The Biblioteca Marucelliana, a public amenity and a reflection of Florentine cultural life since its foundation early in the 18th century, is the home of a collection of 19th century and early 20th century fashion plates, donated in 1965 by Count Carlo Gamba. This collection is used by both scholars and students, including students training to be theatre and fashion designers.

The Istituto Politecnico Internazionale della Moda or ‘Polimoda’, located in Florence and Prato, was founded in 1986 to provide for the training needs of the fashion industry. Its documentation centre, in Florence, specialises in contemporary fashion and the clothing industry. A wide range of materials – including periodicals, slides, videos, forecasts, and a small collection of actual garments – is mostly on open access, and is represented in its entirety in a database which allows for different kinds of online searching.