About the only way a small non-profit art museum and its library can hope to create and disseminate information about both its art and bibliographic collections is through collaboration and co-operation. The Akron Art Museum, the University of Akron Libraries, and OhioLink (the state-wide library and multimedia consortium) joined forces to compile the necessary records, images and software to connect information in the museum library’s catalogue to image files, and other biographic and bibliographic databases. Selected portions of the newly created resources are refashioned and merged with web-based lesson plans for use within the museum itself, out in the greater metropolitan area, and wherever Internet-based web resources can reach.

The National Gallery of Ireland Library has recently re-opened to internal and external readers after a number of years. The concentration so far has been on reader services, while a major revision of the cataloguing and classification procedures is being undertaken. New projects to organise the Gallery’s Archives and make them more accessible for research, and to open a sponsored Centre for the Study of Irish Art in 2002-3, show the Library’s revived interest in reaching its potential users.

Chinese art libraries reflect many of the changes which have occurred in the art and culture of this society over the past 100 years. While a visiting scholar at Nanjing Arts Institute, the author had the opportunity to interview librarians working in major art libraries in Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenyang. This first part of her report gives general background, describes the library collections in the institutions visited, and addresses questions of funding and staff. As the electronic era shrinks the world of art librarianship, and as we seek greater cooperation and expanded networking opportunities, knowledge about Chinese art libraries will provide the foundation for future partnerships and resource sharing.

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.

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.

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.

‘Nieuwe Kunst’ is the Dutch variant of what is known as Art Nouveau or Jugendstil in other parts of Europe. As far as book art is concerned, the highlight of this style was between 1892 and 1903. When interest in Art Nouveau began to flourish again in the 1960s, private individuals and libraries in the Netherlands started to collect Nieuwe Kunst books; these collections reflect a varied production, in form as well as in content.

A recent survey has examined the current position of slide libraries in Ireland, with particular regard to cataloguing, organisation, staffing, funding, facilities, training and computerisation. Despite the existence of a number of substantial slide collections, little training is available for slide librarians; the Association of Visual Arts in Ireland (AVAIL) plans to study possible solutions to this problem as part of a planned series of professional development seminars to be held over the next eighteen months.

Collecting and preserving heritage materials across the broad spectrum of the performing arts on a national scale is a daunting task. Much of the material is as ephemeral and as transitory as the theatrical experience itself. In Australia there is a realistic acceptance of the need for a distributed national collection. An active network of individuals and institutions are working to ensure the preservation of the country’s performing arts heritage and to enhance access to those collections, increasingly by electronic means.

Books are an extremely significant part of our cultural heritage. For this reason visual propaganda on their behalf is very important, since so many of them are treasures in storage. And the problem of their low profile could be solved by organising temporary book displays and creating special museums for books. The Vladimir-Suzdal Museum in Russia is setting an award-winning example.

The recent exhibition James Joyce’s typewriter and other stories: books at the London Institute was jointly curated by a librarian and an academic tutor. The aim was to demonstrate how six special collections in the London Institute’s Libraries and Learning Resources were relevant to the courses the students follow. In parallel, students from the Institute’s Book Arts MA created artists’ books influenced by one of the collections, and these were displayed in the exhibition alongside work by bookbinding and print media students.

The large and varied collection of Irish historical photographs previously housed in the National Library of Ireland has recently been relocated to Dublin’s Temple Bar. A purpose-built archive provides storage vaults, reading room facilities and an exhibition space for this important aspect of the Irish cultural heritage, thus balancing the preservation of the photographs with access to the images. This paper provides a candid look at the development of a National Photographic Archive.

When national museums and galleries were still a relatively new form of public institution, official policies of accessibility and popular education were frequently expressed through a sustained use of metaphor drawn from the discourse of the book. Museums became repositories of knowledge or sources of information on good design, and the visitors readers of objects. Such rhetorical devices could prove counter-productive, for they were based on assumptions, not facts, about the extent of popular literacy and the nature and diversity of reading practices, and yet this form of conceptualisation affected the form, content and quantity of early museum and gallery publications.

In 1966 John Latham and some friends began chewing Clement Greenberg’s book Art and culture: collected essays. The resulting art work, entitled Art and Culture (1966-1969), is now recognised as a seminal conceptual art work and is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Latham, however, had borrowed the book from St. Martin’s School of Art library and when he was unable to return it in a suitable condition his teaching contract was not renewed. This essay looks at the history of the work, the ideas behind its creation, and the issues it raises for the culture of the book today.

Founded 300 years ago, Marsh’s Library in Dublin – Ireland’s first public library – is described by its librarian as a ‘treasury of the European mind’. The outstanding collections, in their purpose-built 18th-century accommodation, are still accessible to the public. They include Irish books and manuscripts and books on subjects such as travel, botany, music and natural history. Recently the catalogue of printed books has been computerized and made available on the Internet.