Several museums and libraries in North America and Europe house in their collections expressive works of art from Latin America. An understanding of the source of such collections requires study of their history and of the background from which they come, even if, as a matter of fact, collecting works of art and bibliographical assets on such a theme is not new. The interest in studying artworks which do not belong to the so-called western canon enables a wider knowledge of the art in Latin America. Notwithstanding the reasons behind such interest, it is worth noting that some facts related to their development are still lively, such as the interests roused by the travelling artists in the 19th century, who departed in search of the unknown or exotic and came back to their homeland with an imagination full of images from the New World. It is undeniable that Latin America has had a key role in the major changes that occurred during the age of discovery, when Europe focused on its colonies. Nowadays, as we observe the recurrence of such a foreign look at Latin America, we might ask ourselves how Latin America sees itself.

Life on the Outskirts is a digital archiving project being undertaken in collaboration between the Helen Storey Foundation and Kingston University. Helen Storey studied Foundation and Fashion at Kingston Polytechnic before her varied career as a fashion designer in Italy and London and as a social artist collaborating with scientists on projects including Primitive Streak, Catalytic Clothing and Wonderland. Robert Knifton uses his work with the Helen Storey Foundation to discuss key issues around digital archiving such as ‘born digital’ artefacts, digital barriers to materiality and ritualized material encounters in the archive, multivocality of digital archival artefacts, and the educational uses of the digital archive, and the great potential of the performative digital archive space.

The historically significant manuscript collection of the medieval Abbey Lorsch is today scattered over various institutions in different countries. Based on the last major research 309 manuscripts were identified in 73 libraries, archives and museums as part of the international digitization project Bibliotheca Laureshamensis - digital. By means of digital facsimiles all former Lorsch manuscripts were united in one virtual library, freely accessible in the internet, and enriched with detailed manuscript descriptions. The dispersed character of the library and the broad variety of holding institutions shaped the project profoundly. They not only had an impact on organisational matters as well as the digitization and cataloguing workflow but also coined the presentation and entire structure of the Virtual Monastic Library of Lorsch.

In 2014 the RKD launched RKD Explore, a new interface for searching the collection databases. This state-of-the-art search engine provides a multitude of search possibilities. And although most of the art-historical information is still in analogue form in The Hague, RKD Explore lets users really explore the richness of the ever-growing digital content of the databases.

A wide selection of recent articles argues for an active involvement of libraries in Digital Humanities. This engagement would not only reflect the traditional role of libraries to support ongoing research, but would also provide the opportunity to re-envision their responsibilities and to create a space for research and development within their organisation. In our opinion, such an implementation of R&D in academic libraries is indeed essential to provide adequate support to digital scholarship. Digital projects also benefit greatly when they welcome the library as a full and valued partner. This point is illustrated through a discussion of EuropeanaPhotography, in which the KU Leuven (Belgium) acted as the coordinating partner.

Museums have seen the universality of Wikipedia use and have started to open up their data to re-use on the Internet. This is an effort both to improve the information available to casual users and researchers and to make images and information from their holdings more accessible. In a paper originally delivered at the IFLA Art Libraries Section pre-conference in August 2014, Sylvain Machefert, a university systems librarian, describes some of his activities as a member of Wikimédia France. A project between the Centre Pompidou and Wikimédia designed to involve the art-loving public, as well as those with more expert art experience, serves as a case study. He assesses the project’s strengths and weaknesses on the basis of its outcomes. He touches on some other projects that have also contributed to the improvement of art information available through one of France’s and the world’s most popular general web services.

As project manager of the Art Discovery Group Catalogue project, and on behalf of the artlibraries.net committee, Geert-Jan Koot explains the development of the Art Discovery Group Catalogue. This discovery service powered by WorldCat is a new, separate project developed by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in Europe for art libraries, which became officially available on May 1st 2014. The project has been accepted within the international Future of Art Bibliography (FAB) initiative of the Getty Research Institute as its bibliographic component. The fact that the system is being developed in Europe provides an excellent equilibrium between Europe and America within the project. Following the invitation to participate, over 80 libraries have so far expressed interest, of which 60 have joined the catalogue. This project is a major step in one of the FAB goals of making art bibliographical information available worldwide through collaboration.