John Cotton Dana, who died in 1929, had been Librarian of the Newark Public Library since 1902. Among many other achievements, he was responsible for the development of remarkable art collections in the Library, including a collection of prints, and of a Picture Collection of visual images; the programme of art exhibitions he organised in the Library led to the founding of the Newark Museum. The collections Dana initiated continued to grow after his death, guided by his inspiration: they are of regional and even national importance and, via library networking, serve the whole state of New Jersey; the scope of the print collection has been extended to include several categories of printed ephemera, including shopping bags.

For much of his life the Rumanian-born artist Arthur Segal championed the cause of picture lending for the benefit of the public and as a means of helping artists to earn a living. In Germany in the mid-1920s, Segal put forward his plans for lending institutions for works of art, akin to lending libraries for books. Widespread support was not forthcoming, and an experimental scheme organised by an artists’ association in Berlin ceased in 1927. Segal could give only qualified support to an alternative concept of hire purchase. Arthur Segal settled in England in 1936; some years after his death, his ideas contributed to the devising of an art loan scheme, launched by the London Borough of Holborn public library, which featured the work of local artists. Segal deserves to be remembered; his life and achievements have been celebrated by exhibitions in Berlin and Cologne, and the following article has been translated into English so that his ideas and endeavours can be more widely appreciated.

In an age in which so much information is communicated through images, libraries can no longer exclude the ‘new technology of the image’. It is essential for libraries to respond to the challenge of the media, and to recognise, for example, the importance of television, which has a very visible and vital presence in the Bibliothèque publique d’information at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Ever since the invention of photography, France has been the home of a lively tradition of active, innovative interest in photography. This is reflected in the existence of the Centre national de la photographies and the Ecole nationale de la photographie, in collections and exhibitions of photographs, and recently in the use made of videodiscs, by both museums and libraries, as a means of storing images and making them accessible. Telecommunications offer the prospect of online access to a network linking image collections together as a single visual resource. The most serious obstacles to be overcome are neither technological nor financial: the legal question of copyright has to be addressed, while the muted interest of historians does not as yet represent an overwhelming demand for such a service, and much may depend on librarians to stimulate the enthusiasm of potential users.

In the last decade, some 60 videodiscs have been produced on aspects of the French cultural heritage. These represent nearly one-third of the total of videodiscs recorded in a national survey published in 1988. All types of collection, and every historical period, are represented. Videodiscs have been employed for the sake of their administrative benefits and to conserve visual material, but also to exploit that material more effectively and to make it more accessible to the public. Thus some videodiscs are available to the public while others are not. The requirements for producing a videodisc vary with the purpose which it is to serve; although there are several different methods of transferring images to videodisc, the quality of the image depends above all on the quality of the original; similarly, there are various ways of linking images to the supporting documentation without which a videodisc is as good as useless. Initiatives to date have explored the potential of this new technology in an innovative spirit; in so doing they have demonstrated, but have scarcely begun to fulfil, the variety of needs which, in this visual age, videodiscs have the capacity to meet.

The potential of the videodisc has been recognised at the Louvre and space has been set aside in the Richelieu wing, recently made available to the Museum, to accommodate videodisc installations. Three videodiscs have been or are being produced in the first instance. One provides a general approach to the collections in the Louvre; a second assists the visitor to explore aspects of Ancient Greece by means of a choice of itineraries; and the third illustrates the themes of the guided tours of the Louvre and will be used by the guides to provide a brief introduction at the beginning of their tours. Of these only the first is available for sale, the other two having been designed explicitly for use within the Museum.

The videodisc ‘Images de la Révolution Française’, which draws on the extensive collections of the Département des Estampes et de la Photographie of the Bibliothèque Nationale, was conceived in 1982 as a means of preparing for the Bicentenary of 1989. Collaboration was established with a parallel project initiated by Pergamon Press, the aim of which was to publish a research collection of written source material on microfiche, and the joint venture was subsequently supported by the French government. The videodisc, comprising 38,000 images relating to the events, the ideals, and the cultural background of the Revolution, was produced, using specially created colour transparencies for the most part, to meet both PAL and NTSC standards; although designed so that it can be used by itself, both interactive software, and a scholarly printed catalogue, are also available.

The Archives des Musées Nationaux in the Palais du Louvre comprise the archives of the Louvre itself, and of the Direction des Musées de France including the Réunion des Musées Nationaux. The archives of the Louvre include both ‘les registres de copistes’, a record of artists who sought entry to the Louvre, to visit and to make copies, during 1821-1850, and ‘les registres des salons’, covering the years 1824-1853 when the salons were still held in the Louvre. Together these comprise an invaluable source of information on artists in the first half of the 19th century, including as they do details of particular works, and artists’ addresses. A detailed analysis of this documentation was scheduled to begin at the start of 1990.

The Archives Marie-Alain Couturier is devoted to the work of one man and to his achievement in reconciling religious and Modern art. The Archives owes its existence to Père Régamey who was able to keep Père Couturier’s papers together after he died in 1954, and to the intervention of the Menil Foundation in 1975. The Archives has two aims: to publish the writings of Père Couturier together with related material, and to conserve a body of documentation which is indispensable for the study of 20th century art. The Archives comprise Père Couturier’s manuscripts and correspondence, and an extensive file, including correspondence with Matisse, documenting in detail the planning and building of the chapel at the convent at Vence.

Material amassed by art critics in pursuance of their work, and according to criteria different from those of museums and academic institutions, can have its own archival value but is seldom preserved. The Archives de la critique d’art, newly established at the University of Rennes with support from AICA and FRAC-Bretagne, aims to remedy this situation, initially for France and ultimately for Europe as a whole, by collecting and preserving material of this kind, and by creating a database of information on art criticism worldwide.