The Library & Archives at Kew hold one of the world’s greatest collections of botanical illustration, assembled over the last 200 years. A resource well-known to the natural history community, it contains much to interest art historians. Using this historically rich heritage our forward thinking includes acquisition of more contemporary items and the formulation of a digital strategy for 21st-century access and exploitation.

A six-month project undertaken by the University College Dublin School of Architecture has investigated the possibilities of putting a collection of images, transferred from slides, on to videodisc accessed through a computer. The project grew out of an earlier project to computerize the catalogue of the Slide Library of the Architecture and Planning Library. Drawbacks include loss of image quality and the impossibility of adding to the disc once pressed. Changing technology may provide answers to some of these problems, enabling the benefits confirmed by the project’s successful completion to be exploited further.

Although the library of the Fashion Museum of Province of Antwerp is only five years old, it already boasts an exciting history. Evolved from the collection of the national Vrieselhof Textiles and Costume Museum, the Fashion Museum Library opened its doors in 2002, in the heart of Antwerp, the Fashion City. This article relates the history of this library, with a look at both today and the future, attempting to pinpoint the uniqueness of what it means to manage a collection on the phenomenon of ‘contemporary fashion’.

Some reflections on the life and home of S.C. Hall, founder of the Art Journal, his wife Anna Maria, and their literary explorations of the Thames.

In situations characterised by complex and ambiguous economic conditions, it becomes necessary to structure organisations in ways that will meet the challenges. This paper introduces the innovative strategic plan currently being implemented at the Centro de Documentación y Biblioteca del Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. This is still in its early stages, but a contrast can already be drawn with the status quo five years ago when, despite being involved in various initiatives, the Library had no strategy of its own and no established reputation for contemporary art research.

The number of North American art museums with a presence on the internet has more than doubled since 1999. This is not surprising given the power of new media to transform the experiences that museum visitors have with our cultural institutions. Every year museums attract thousands of visitors to view, both in person and online, their specialized collections and unique exhibitions. Developing in tandem with these resources and largely unfamiliar to the general, museum-going public, the libraries and archives of these institutions have contributed to the research mission, educational programming, documentary history, and curatorial functions of museums in countless ways. In addition, especially for art historians and other scholars, museum libraries and archives have been and continue to be increasingly valuable for primary and secondary sources, including artists’ correspondence, diaries, sketches, hard-to-find monographs, exhibition records and sales catalogues. What is unclear, however, is the extent to which resources in art museum libraries and archives are being documented, preserved and made accessible online. This research is perhaps the first of its kind to evaluate, on a small scale and during a span of twelve years, the web presence of 22 North American art museum libraries and archives.

Artists’ books have been exhibited several times in the Netherlands since the late 1970s, notably at the Van Reekummuseum at Apeldoorn. They can be purchased from Galerie A in Amsterdam, and collections can be found in several Dutch museums including the Stedelijk Museum, the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, and the Groninger Museum, although problems associated with storage and conservation tend to inhibit access.

A case study concerning the in-house digitization of a small collection of Central Saint Martins graduate fashion shows. The background of the collection is outlined (VHS and DVD recordings spanning from 1979 to present), as well as the workflow put in place to deal with the technical aspects of recording, cataloguing, processing and archiving an audio-visual collection with minimal budget and staffing.

In 1975 the Library at Preston Polytechnic undertook the task of reorganising and developing a collection of slides previously in the custody of the School of Art and Design. Circumstances dictated that the collection be organised for maximum use and minimal maintenance. The slides have been classified by 18th Dewey and housed in transparent sheets of pockets suspended in filing cabinets, enabling borrowers to browse and help themselves.

ARLIS Norge was conceived at the IFLA Conference at Munich in August, 1983, and held its first annual meeting in Oslo on 25th January 1984. Its membership includes all art librarians and art libraries in Norway. Meetings are held regularly, and courses and study visits are also organised from time to time. The newsletter ARLIS Nytt is published four times a year. ARLIS Norge participates in ARLIS Norden and in the IFLA Section of Art Libraries, and actively fosters international relations. During the last five years, ARLIS Norge has established a bibliographic database on Norwegian art history, KUNSTBIB. Current and future concerns include art resources in public libraries, education for art librarianship, and the need for a Norwegian thesaurus of art terms. (This is an English translation of an article which was published in Norwegian in ARLIS Nytt 1993 no. 3/4 p. 1-4).

Mexico has played an important role in art and architecture since the prehispanic period, and has contributed not only to the spread of Mexican culture but also to the enrichment of the art world in general. But Mexican art and architecture have been poorly covered by indexes and abstracts, possibly because many of the relevant periodicals have been short-lived, or because of the use of the Spanish language, or due to intermittent financial resources. Nevertheless creators of bibliographical tools such as databases in Mexico are convinced of their country’s cultural richness, and are committed to spreading information in this subject area, whatever difficulties may be encountered.

Founded on the collection of the fashion magazine publisher Franz Lipperheide, the Costume Library is a reference library open to the public, comprising material in many forms documenting dress in all times and places together with such related subjects as personal appearance, textiles, and social behaviour. The collection continues to grow through the purchase of newly-published and historic items.

Although the idea of lending works of art originated in Germany in 1885, the first library to actually do so was that of Newark, U.S.A., through the initiative of John Cotton Dana in 1903-4. Other countries followed suit - Britain before the end of the Second World War, Scandinavia by the late 1950s, and France, where in recent years over 30 picture libraries have been established with state support under Mitterand’s Minister for Culture, Jack Lang.

While in East Germany there are over 100 picture libraries lending mainly reproductions, in West Germany there are 61, lending exclusively original works. The Graphotek in Bremen Public Library is the third largest of these, and all citizens over 16 can borrow from its collection of over 2,200 works for eight weeks at a time, choosing either directly or, at any of the six branch libraries, from colour slides and catalogues.

The Bremen Graphotek has set out to build up a representative collection of German and international art from all periods, with special emphasis on contemporary art; prints make up the greater part of the collection, and reproductions are excluded. 720 artists are represented; 50% of funding is reserved for Bremen artists. Over 33,000 loans have been made in the Graphotek’s first ten years, with 75%-80% of the collection being out on loan at any given time. There has been a gradual trend towards more borrowing by schools, hospitals, etc.

The Graphotek has promoted 88 exhibitions. The last of these, on the occasion of the Graphotek’s 10th anniversary, displayed work by 70 artists illustrative of new directions in art since 1970.

The Graphotek also functions as a centre for information on art, artists, art galleries, etc., with reference books and art journals available for consultation.