Since the mid-1980s, a number of initiatives in Europe and the United Kingdom have sought to promote the participation of the disabled in artistic activities. A focal point for a European network linking organisations and individuals throughout Europe is provided by a European Resource Centre, based at Hertfordshire College of Art and Design in the United Kingdom, which publishes the journal Atria and which maintains the European Arts and Disability Database. Some other organisations publish their own newsletters, while certain other databases can provide relevant information.

The Sous-Section des Bibliothèques d’Art gathered in a successful and perhaps historic meeting, at St-Etienne, in October 1989. In spite of their different types, and in spite of being linked with central government in differing ways, French art libraries are collaborating more and more. Plans for five projects -on periodical indexing, periodical microfilming, the adoption of a thesaurus, the cataloguing of exhibition catalogues, and networking - were discussed, as was the creation of a new national art library which will occupy the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale and which can be expected to play a key role in coordinating future developments. A resolution regarding the national art library is appended.

The National Art Library, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, seeks to fulfil its national role by becoming the focal point of a wider network of libraries. In order to support this role, and to carry it forward into the 1990s, the Library has redesigned its management structure, developed a role as a training library for the art library profession, and applied a professional approach, involving the collection and consideration of management data, to the Library’s administration. Collection development has been redefined, shifting the emphasis from the past to the present; this has resulted in an increased intake of material, in spite of a frozen budget, with a consequent need for more space which will be provided through a reorganisation of the Library’s existing accommodation. A plan for the conservation of items in the Library’s collections is being devised. Automation, installed in 1990, brings with it further possibilities and the critical question of whether to prioritise the development of the collections or the development of access to the collections.

The first edition of Lois Swan Jones’s methodological and bibliographic guide appeared in 1978; it is now available, under an amended title, in an extensively revised third edition. This, in effect a new book, and though susceptible to (and worthy of) close criticism, enhances its standing as the best published guide to research in the visual arts.