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.

Following the FAB Supplemental Meetings held 21-23 June 2010 at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), there was general agreement that two prototype applications should be built to provide new ideas and technical approaches to compare/contrast to the artlibraries.net model. Jim Michalko, Vice President of OCLC Research, agreed that OCLC would build a prototype modeling a group catalog of art history libraries within the OCLC membership, while the GRI committed to building one on a Solr/Lucene platform that combined heterogeneous data sources from some of the FAB members. The resulting prototypes were publicly demonstrated at the artlibraries.net Users Group Meeting in Lisbon in October 2010. Other articles in this issue detail the deficiencies of the current bibliographic model and the information needs of the 21st-century art history scholar. The prototype development was based upon and informed by these issues, and sought to define possible technical solutions to overcome some of these inadequacies. The prototypes must also extend the paradigm of bibliography being contained within an abstracting and indexing construct, and move towards a concept of ‘complete bibliography’.

Since their appearance in the early 20th century, catalogues prepared for exhibitions of African art have undergone a gradual transformation. Beginning as mere checklists many of these publications have, in the 1970s and 80s, evolved into major scholarly works whose significance transcends their original purpose as guides to the exhibitions. Changes occurring over the years are traced through examination of the form and content of representative catalogues and by review of the reception by art historians of many of these works into the corpus of literature of African art. The growing importance of exhibition catalogues as important art historical documents is also demonstrated by a chronological analysis of bibliographic citations in the major scholarly journal of African art in the United States. Finally, scrutiny of sources and annotations included in an important bibliographic guide to the literature of African art indicates how firmly established the exhibition catalogue has become as one of the most important publication forms for the dissemination of scholarly writing on African art.

[This paper won the ARLIS/NA Gerd Muehsam Award for 1986. We hope to publish a sequel in a future issue, on exhibitions of African art in Africa and the development of catalogues written by Africans. Editor].

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.

It is undoubtedly an appropriate time to promote discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of traditional library cataloguing policies and practices, and to identify some potential improvements for the future. Four major recent reports on the future of library catalogues, produced by some of the key international players in the library world, have come up with remarkably similar conclusions and could provide libraries with some practical guidelines for improvement which enjoy a broad measure of international support in the library world.

From a cultural point of view as well as politically and geographically, Hungary is very much part of Eastern Europe; although the “Iron Curtain” appears less formidable than hitherto, opportunities for people to encounter works of art are relatively few. In these circumstances, public libraries have a vital role to play in organising art exhibitions; their exhibition activities have been surveyed, and could in future be coordinated, by the National Széchényi Library. With some notable exceptions, the scope of exhibitions has tended to be unadventurous, focussing especially on the graphic and book arts because of their obvious relevance in a library environment. There is a particular need for exhibitions for children which would encourage uninhibited experiences of works of art and design.

This study evaluates the content coverage of Google Scholar, as it compares to three bibliographic databases – Arts & humanities citation index, Bibliography of the history of art and Art full text/Art index retrospective – on the subject of art history. The comparison reveals that it indexes roughly one-third of the 470 tested articles, dwarfed by the Arts & humanities citation index’s 73% coverage. Additionally, 64% of the 157 articles retrieved in Google Scholar are ‘citation-only’ records that contain incomplete bibliographic data and lack direct links to the abstracts or full text of the articles.

A survey of the English, European, and American magazines which might have influenced 19th century architecture in Australia and other places distant from the centres of urban industrial civilisation, and of Australian architectural magazines of the same period.

Interest in, and information on, Irish architecture has increased greatly in recent years. Information providers are faced with the problem of tracking down relevant material, much of it grey literature, and then making it widely available. The problem is exacerbated since such material rarely appears in national and international bibliographies and databases. The solution described here has been to establish a joint database (PADDI: Planning Architecture Design Database Ireland), produced collaboratively by Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin.

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.

Founded in Montréal in 1980, the Centre d’information Artexte is a non-profit organisation devoted to the collection and distribution of information on all aspects of contemporary visual arts. The organisation has developed two subject areas in support of its objective (the exhibition catalogue and Canadian art) and sponsors activities on 3 fronts (documentation, distribution and publication). The Centre d’information Artexte’s collections are noted for their comprehensive holdings in contemporary art (1965-). A bibliographic database was developed by the Centre to support advanced research in contemporary art. A bilingual tool, it indexes indepth information found within the exhibition catalogue. Artexte serves both the French and English communities in Canada and promotes Canadian publications in contemporary art abroad.

In part one of this article, published in vol. 39, no. 3 2014, I described how the History and Theory of Art and Design Slide Library at Cardiff is to be reinvented as a visual resources collection by being put to new and creative uses. Here in part two I consider possible arguments for safeguarding at least one exemplar slide library to be preserved intact and exactly as it was when used for art school lectures. The arguments put forward are derived from the Florence Declaration to which ARLIS/UK & Ireland is a recent signatory. Were the arguments successful in persuading the art and design and library communities that such a collection should be preserved? I end by profiling the set of circumstances I believe would need to co-exist before any institution would find such a project to be practically, financially, culturally and intellectually viable.

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.

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.

The Cabell Screen, a 400 square foot media display installed on the façade of James Branch Cabell Library is a recent venue for artistic and scholarly expression at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. Spanning two floors of the main academic library building, the Cabell Screen displays curated electronic exhibitions of still and moving images to thousands of people who walk by the building each day. With no additional budget or staffing, a committee of librarians developed a mission statement, content strategy, and workflows to program and promote content. While the Cabell Screen uses a specific type of technology, the practices established at VCU Libraries can be applied to a range of budgets and media, including projections and monitors, to create a dedicated electronic exhibition space.

In 2009, I was two years into my tenure as a museum employee, managing a collection of small exhibition brochures, pamphlets and gallery announcements at the National Gallery of Art Library. That summer, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith reported on a phenomenon I had also observed in my capacity as Reference Librarian for Vertical Files: the decline of the printed gallery post card. Smith's ArtsBeat blog post, ‘Gallery Card as Relic,’ is a breezy elegy surveying recent “final notice” cards mailed from commercial galleries that were “going green” by eliminating paper mailings. I, however, was feeling less light-hearted about the demise of what Smith describes as a “useful bit of art-world indicator…[and] an indispensable constant creatively deployed by artists, avidly cherished by the ephemera-obsessed and devotedly archived by museums.”

Copyright, if used effectively, managed well and respected in business arrangements, encourages and enhances access to content in the Internet environment. But with the advent of new technologies and the emergence of a knowledge-based society, new ways of thinking are required in order to ensure that the Internet remains a ‘place’ where information can flow with few if any restrictions. Using the modern museum as example, this paper analyzes two types of intellectual property – databases and photographs – to determine whether copyright protection reduces or enhances access. It also touches briefly on some new management models which meet the needs of the users as well as the authors of copyright materials, while still fulfilling the key financial objectives of the organizations that host or provide content.

The concept of artistic knowledge is considered, that which is unique to the artist and that which can be acquired by other means, particularly from the storehouse of a library’s collections. The problem of art being at a remove in a library can be countered by collections of ‘real’ art e.g. artists’ books, and by outgoing, generous art librarianship. The art library can also make its own contribution to the maintenance of traditional artistic knowledge by concentrating at least a part of its collections on whatever is unique in its own area, thus counterbalancing the tendency to uniform, ‘monochrome’ coverage.