The temporary cessation to publication of the leading and most comprehensive bibliography in the arts, the International bibliography of art (formerly Bibliography of the history of art) in 2009, led to a lively debate on the future of art bibliography. Many scholars, librarians and information specialists were in favour of saving the established model and of ensuring its continuing existence. At the same time there arose the controversial and much-debated question of whether the traditional model of the IBA – grounded in an intellectual analysis of documents (articles from journals, monographs, exhibition catalogues, etc.) and their description with standardised metadata and abstracts – still corresponds to the needs of modern research on the one hand and to the new potentialities and realities of displaying, connecting, exchanging and gaining information in digital data networks on the other. Library catalogues play a decisive role in this consideration: unlike bibliographies, which follow traditional and more or less unvaried standards, they have mutated to a great degree from inflexible registers to dynamic networks. They enrich and connect the bibliographic information with additional data, they invite the user to tag and to review the corresponding literature and they enable complex forms of unforeseeable discovery. Thus the ‘crisis’ into which art bibliography was plunged when the old IBA ceased publication, at the same time opened up the opportunity to discuss alternative, future-oriented solutions for the appropriate format of bibliographic information supply in the arts today.

Visual forms of communication are dominant in the digital era. As the visual has increased in influence throughout contemporary culture, art & design slide collections, which would have traditionally helped users make sense of the visual world, have begun to rapidly disappear. How are students of art & design (and beyond) engaging with this visual proliferation now they can no longer rely on the support of the institutional slide collections and their expert staff?

Within higher education courses are being designed which emphasise the acquisition of learning skills rather than the absorption of ‘blocks’ of subject knowledge. Such courses indicate the way in which library-based learning skills can be developed alongside other learning skills, and also show the necessity of the librarian’s involvement in course design teams. This approach to library teaching has been developed most, perhaps, in art and design libraries where the demands of the ‘hidden curriculum’ have always been felt, if not overtly acknowledged.

(The text of a paper presented at the ARLIS Seminar on User Education held at Leeds Polytechnic, 7-8 April, 1978.)

For the past fifteen years the Getty Provenance Index has developed a series of projects that index auction catalogues, beginning with British catalogues of the 19th century and followed by French, Dutch, German and Belgian catalogues of the same period or earlier. This has led to the discovery of many previously unrecorded catalogues, most notably German and Belgian, providing a strong incentive to consider how Frits Lugt’s Répertoire des Catalogues de Ventes should eventually be revised, and even brought up to date. The Getty projects also include automating the individual items in the catalogues, which has led not only to much new data about the provenance of paintings held by museums in many parts of the world, but has also helped to identify the owners of collections found in previously anonymous sale catalogues.

The Gallica programme of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Digital Library of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), are two major French initiatives in the digitisation of art history information. Gallica was launched in 1995 and by the end of 2007 incorporated some 80,000 images and 90,000 texts. Essentially encyclopaedic in content, it nevertheless contains much material relevant to art, including iconographic documents from the library’s specialist departments. Mass digitisation of some 100,000 works per annum from 2007 onwards will add a substantial body of texts and periodicals in this subject. INHA’s digitisation programme for its Digital Library began in 2002: the two main areas it is currently concentrating on are a corpus of ‘classics of art history’, and the digitisation of specialised and rare documents such as the pre-1920 catalogues of the Louvre. 200,000 images are already available on line.

Excellent organisational and communication skills, familiarity with available digital technology, and the ability to anticipate new developments are attributes art librarians require if they are to continue to be respected and valued professionals. Collaboration between museums, knowledge-sharing and merging library collections will cause individual museum libraries to disappear or be transformed into knowledge centres affiliated with museum collections. These will be a forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas between researchers and intellectuals who share a common passion. The infrastructure for art-related information will be a digital research environment where the indexing of research material is both unambiguous and exhaustive and integrally available.

The British Film Institute (BFI) has been collecting documentation and ephemera relating to the cinema since its own inception in 1933. These collections have grown into a valuable resource for the researcher into cinema and television history, as well as reflecting artistic trends prevailing at the time of production. Although modest when set beside the posters, stills, designs and museum objects held at the BFI, the collections of press or campaign books and general ephemera should not be overlooked.

AVAIL came into being as a means of connecting more or less isolated professionals working with visual arts collections, ARLIS/UK & Eire (as it then was) having failed to meet the needs of colleagues in Ireland. The idea of an association for Ireland was hatched at a conference organised by ARLIS/UK with the IFLA Section of Art Libraries in April, 1992; AVAIL was subsequently inaugurated the following October. AVAIL is inter-national, in that it represents the whole island of Ireland; it also represents the broad spectrum of visual arts information management, not just librarianship. As one of its first tasks AVAIL is preparing a directory of visual arts information providers in Ireland. AVAIL’S very existence has apparently persuaded the Department of Library and Information Studies at University College Dublin to incorporate some specialist art training as an option in their programme of education for librarianship, and AVAIL – perhaps in cooperation with ARLIS/UK & Ireland – plans to meet the training needs of its members. AVAIL has adopted as its aims not only to provide a cooperative network for the provision and exchange of visual arts information, but also to ensure preservation and conservation of all Irish visual arts materials. AVAIL is working closely with ARLIS/UK & Ireland, and a joint conference of the two bodies is to take place in Dublin and Belfast in 1995. (This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 25th Anniversary Conference of ARLIS/UK & Ireland, London 7th-10th April 1994).

From the outset ARLIS has consistently published serials, from the ARLIS Newsletter to the present Art Libraries Journal (with its international role) and the ARLIS News-sheet (for current and domestic information). An annual Directory of Members has provided vital information about ARLIS membership. Monographs and occasional publications, some published by ARLIS and some in collaboration with other publishers, have included a variety of manuals, guidelines, directories, indexes and union lists. A full list of publications is appended.

Established in 1960, the Museum van het Boek is known for its holdings and exhibitions of Western book art from the last 110 years. Building on the starter collections of two donors, a private printer and a bibliophile, the Museum’s acquisitions now focus mainly on modern book art. More than 25,000 of the 450,000 objects in the Museum are books showing the development of standard Dutch publishing, the work of individual book illustrators, type designers and calligraphers, contemporary Dutch private presses and artists’ books. There is also considerable foreign material, notably from Germany and Great Britain.

artlibraries.net, formerly the VKK, is an international specialised meta catalogue allowing the integrated retrieval of bibliographic records and, should the occasion arise, other objects from distinctive art historical databases. This article analyses artlibraries.net from a functional point of view, but also discusses the cataloguing and subject indexing practice prevailing in art libraries internationally. It aims to identify some parameters for the future of art bibliography.

The Melva J. Dwyer Award was established in honour of Melva Dwyer, a founding member of CARLIS, upon her retirement after 31 years of distinguished service on behalf of Canadian art librarianship and as Fine Arts Librarian at the University of British Columbia. The award is presented to the best Canadian art reference work, broadly interpreted, produced by a Canadian author. Unlike other awards, the Dwyer Award is a limited edition print by Calgary artist Susan Ford that incorporates both the concept and title of the prize. Eight awards have been presented so far, in addition to the first of the ten prints which was presented to Melva Dwyer in 1987.

A project to enhance access to architectural drawings and manuscripts has recently begun at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. Two major collections of designs - those in the V&A’s Prints, Drawings and Paintings Collection and those in the Special Collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) - will be housed together at the Museum from 2003. In this article two of the V&A’s curators outline the planning for the move, which involves modifying existing space to provide new accommodation for staff, storage and consultation by the public, and describe the broader partnership between the two institutions, which promises much for the study and appreciation of architecture.

Gaining access to primary research materials is critical to the support of research and learning. The Research Libraries Group’s initiatives to make archival materials, and museum objects and their records, available in an electronic environment are exploring the technical possibilities of achieving international, integrated access to textual and visual materials. That seamless web of resources so desired by researchers is getting ever closer to reality.

The Centre for Fashion Studies was established at Stockholm University in Sweden, in July 2006 through a generous donation from the Erling Persson Family Foundation, connected to clothing manufacturer H&M.

Fashion Studies at Stockholm University is an independent, theoretical discipline with an interdisciplinary approach looking at the past, present and future, and it includes different areas of critical discourse within the humanities and social sciences. Stockholm University Library plays a key role in research and education conducted at the university, and the library works in close collaboration with all disciplines to provide adequate support to researchers and students in a rapidly changing information society. In this article I will focus on and describe the process of acquiring fashion literature at Stockholm University Library from 2006–2013.

Mr James Christie (1730-1803) became London’s premier auctioneer in the 1760s and he was still at the top of his profession at his death in 1803. This brief history of the man and his auction house outlines his early career in Covent Garden, the setting up of his own auction rooms during the 1760s and some of his early successes. He came to rely less on the three D’s: Death, Divorce and Debt (still the primary reason for selling at auction in the 21st century) for the source of goods, and also moved away from run-of-the-mill anonymous household furniture sales. Christie encouraged a new breed of seller – the lords and ladies of the land together with princes and royals – and the article highlights a few of the varied characters who entrusted James Christie with the sale of their property.