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.

Successor to Thieme-Becker and Vollmer, those great standard reference works for art history, the Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon is an even more ambitious undertaking which will eventually include entries for between 450,000 and 500,000 artists. The data will be published in a number of ways: in book format (including a couple of spin-off versions in hard copy), CD-ROM and, increasingly, online. This article describes the developments one AKL editor has witnessed in the production process for the projected 80 volumes of the complete work, and outlines its role as an authority for artists’ names.

During 2016, after overcoming many obstacles, the library of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (National Institute of Art History - INHA), Jacques-Doucet collection, was established in an exceptional space designed during the Second Empire by the French architect Henri Labrouste (1801–1875). The reopening of this reading room is the fruit of a large-scale renovation project involving several French institutions. It is also the culmination of a long-standing plan to create an illustrious library of art history for France.

Gustavo Grandal Montero (ALJ):Could you give an overview of the main aims and context of the project?

Ami Clarke (AC): The Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing (DAAP) is an interactive, user-driven, searchable database of artists’ books and publications, that acts as a hub to engage with others, built by artists, publishers and a community of creative practitioners in contemporary artists’ publishing, developed via an ethically-driven design process, and supported by Wikimedia UK and Arts Council England. The project is inspired by the site of Banner Repeater's public Archive of Artists’ Publishing on Hackney Downs train station, with 11,000 people passing a day, in response to the need for a similarly dynamic approach to archiving in an online context.

The Art and Design School Libraries (ADSL) Division of ARLIS/NA was tasked with preparing a report on the state of ADSLs across North America. The report team offered preliminary results at the ADSL Division Annual Meeting in May 2021. At the ARLIS/UK & Ireland conference in July 2021, they described Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) activities in ADSLs and some of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sector. Feedback from both events was incorporated into the report, which is now complete and available on the “Publications” page of the ARLIS/NA website. This article, in addition to summarizing some of the findings, discusses the collaborative process of writing and editing the report and the importance of this process as a model for advancing other essential work in this field.

Although it began as the personal library of one of the most influential art historians and connoisseurs of the last century, the Biblioteca Berenson now has a broad interdisciplinary scope that goes far beyond art and art history. As the library of Harvard University’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies since the 1960s, it has become a major resource for research into all aspects of the society, culture and thought of Italy between about 1200 and 1650. Nonetheless the Berenson Library offers rich and often unique resources for art historical research, both on the Renaissance and on the 20th century.

From the point of view of a student of art history in the 1980s re-entering the discipline as a graduate student, the ‘new’ art history represents a dramatically wider field of enquiry involving new methodologies, although ‘old’ art history is still pursued by some academics. The ‘new’ art history employs an interdisciplinary approach which embraces materials far beyond ‘traditional’ art historical sources, and so information has to be sought outside the art library and via the Internet. Librarians responsible for supporting art history studies need to keep in touch with teachers, with curriculum developments, and with the discipline itself; it may also be helpful to get involved in staff/student use of the Web, and to collaborate with other Humanities librarians. The way in which the ‘new’ art history branches out in all directions parallels the hypertext linkages of the Web and the complexity of our globally-connected world.

Wolfgang Freitag’s seminal article, ‘The indivisibility of art librarianship’, published in the Art libraries journal in 1982, occasioned a revisiting of the premises of that article for the historic joint conference of ARLIS/NA and the Visual Resources Association in St. Louis in 2001 to see how his thesis stood the test of time. The two articles that follow, one each by Wolfgang Freitag and Martha Mahard, are reflections on the original article and the course of events in the intervening twenty years. They are published jointly, here and in Art documentation.

During the last fifteen years, Japanese museums and institutions, which previously kept art historical information very much to themselves, have begun to take steps to make information and research materials more accessible. In several cases, museums have founded their own research and information centres. At the same time, the use of computers has been introduced in the humanities, and the potential of the computer as a means of organising, exchanging, and providing access to art historical and bibliographical data is being explored. These “new trends” are being spearheaded by art historians and museums; art librarians are now contributing to the dialogue, and although the concept of the “art library” remains relatively undeveloped in Japan, the time is ripe for art librarianship to flourish.

ARLIS/Norden was founded in 1986 to bring together art libraries and art librarians of all kinds in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The association has maintained close links with the IFLA Section of Art Libraries, and it hosted the Section’s meetings at Stockholm in 1989. ARLIS/Norden has received guests from other countries, while Nordic colleagues have participated in events in other countries. Its own annual meetings are the key events in ARLIS/Norden’s own programme.

Liberty’s textile archive is probably unique in the way it is set up, both through its ownership and in its make-up. It shows only one aspect of the firm’s history, although arguably its most important one. It is of interest not only because of the Liberty fabrics, but for 19th-century textiles in general, as it includes material from most of that century. The main purpose of the archive is to act as a reference library for the in-house studios; however, limited access is offered to specialist users from outside the company.

In 1989, the Japan Art Documentation Society (JADS) was born, with inspiration received from members of overseas art library organisations – ARLIS/UK and Ireland, ARLIS/NA, ARLIS/ANZ and others – who attended the 52nd General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in Tokyo in 1986. However, JADS was very definitely JADS: it did not try to become ARLIS/Japan. What reasoning lay behind the choice of the society’s name? And after its establishment what path did JADS follow: what role did it take on for itself as the framework for joint projects in the art library community in Japan? What were the activities that it aimed to provide to enhance collaboration between museums, libraries and archives? Focussing mainly on the growing interest in Japan in recent years in creating networks between museums, libraries and archives, and on the opening in 2004 of the Art Libraries’ Consortium (ALC), a union catalogue of art libraries based in the Tokyo metropolitan area which has been steadily expanding, this article gives a chronological overview of the developments that have taken place in art libraries and art documentation in Japan from 1986 to 2012.

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.