The overall problem of professional education for Italian librarians arises from the lack of specific schools of librarianship. Librarians must learn ‘on the job’. However, the inauguration of BiArte, the Italian Art Libraries Association, in 1988, has provided a forum through which art librarians can share their experience, knowledge and enthusiasm, and further their professional education … even if it cannot of itself win for librarians the professional image which only a sound, basic training in librarianship can provide.

Advances in visual arts research are significant, easing the gathering process and expanding the horizons of historical investigation. As visual arts scholarship changes, the vocabulary of art is evolving to describe new concepts, perspectives and concerns. Computer technology has made the location, description and retrieval of art information easier. The computer’s capacity to interrelate text and visual data through image processing has led to new types of reference and research tools. Communication amongst art researchers through electronic networks will transform academic discourse. All of these changes impact on the concept of the art library and the role of art librarians and visual curators in university libraries.

The National Art Library (NAL) has moved from its former isolation, through the developments of the last decade, to its present position as a focus for and active player in the art library and information community of the UK. The NAL has worked with ARLIS on some of the major co-operative ventures currently preoccupying the art library field. However, there is still a need for further clarification of, and support for, subject specialist services in the national arena, not least the relationship with the British Library. The potential of the proposed Library Commission and Visual Arts Library and Information Plan is still to be realised. Art librarians must work with their users in formulating a more radical and visionary view of their objectives, as they face the challenges of the future.

This article is a revised version of a paper delivered to the 25th Anniversary Conference of ARLIS/UK & Ireland, London, 7th-10th April 1994.

From its earliest days ARLIS has carried out its work through committees and working parties: the Education Committee (which has organised conferences and courses since 1972), two standards working parties (which have produced guidelines on standards for art libraries), the Cataloguing and Classification Committee (which ‘was preceded by working parties on the Dewey Decimal Classification system and on the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules) and the Visual Resources Committee. A diagram shows the relationship of committees and working parties to Council. (The ARLIS committees concerned with the national coordination of art library resources, and with international matters, are discussed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal.)

Although in the past it has been possible for students of librarianship in Britain to select some specialist options pertaining to art librarianship, this is no longer the case: training for librarianship is generalist in its scope. Intending art librarians have in some cases chosen to study for an arts degree and then to undertake postgraduate training in librarianship, while more recently the proliferation of modular studies has multiplied opportunities for combining different subjects. Art librarianship is learned by working in an art library; in addition, ARLIS/ UK & Ireland provides short courses, workshops, and study visits, as well as an annual conference. Proposals for a national Visual Arts Library and Information Plan (VALIP) may lead to further development of a strategy for the training of art librarians.

Canada’s primary art libraries, centres of excellence by virtue of their specialized collections in Canadian art and architecture, support a readership geographically beyond their primary clientele. They have come about through the individual commitment of librarians or subject specialists, not because of institutional commitment. Consequently, many lack an appropriate share of institutional support and are threatened by shrinking government funding at all levels. Art librarians are isolated from each other, which makes it easier for institutional administrators to be unaware of their ranking among art history libraries, to impede the sharing of collections, and to ignore the potential for adding prestige to the institution through support of centres of excellence.

ARLIS’s awareness of its national role and the necessity for a nationwide response to the needs of art library resources found expression in the work and research activities of the Committee for the National Co-ordination of Art Library Resources. The Committee first established itself as an influential voice in the debate on the National Art Library in the late 1970s and early 80s and later in discussions with the British Library which led in due course to the setting up of the BL Standing Committee on Art Documentation. An initiator of some of ARLIS’s major publications (the Union List of Art Periodicals; Art & Design Documentation: a Directory of Resources), the Committee has also seen notable success in the work of the Exhibition Catalogue project and more recently in the Visual Arts Library & Information Plan (VALIP).

Canadian visual resources professionals believe a national strategy would raise the profile of their group who, although well known elsewhere, are not well known in Canada. Technology has made networking to share cataloguing and participation in electronic communications feasible, but many libraries do not have access to national utilities. Although digital capture and interactive electronic image storage and retrieval hold great promise for visual resources, there is a need for funding for retrospective conversion, imaging and the like. Networking makes authority work more important than it has been: a national strategy should include the formulation of a Canadian artist authority tool. Canadian iconography must be a component of any tools developed to describe art objects and their surrogates. In cooperation with CHIN Canadian art archivists and librarians must develop international standards for descriptive cataloguing. In addition, pressure must be brought to bear to end restrictive copyright for library users.

The ongoing economic recession together with redirection of dwindling educational resources towards the sciences, with less and less for culture, appears to some Canadian art librarians to be marginalizing art library collections and art librarianship. In any case, the current cultural climate invites a broader definition of ‘art’ that encompasses multiculturalism. Another source of concern is the increasing emphasis in our library schools on training information generalists, although the schools are simply addressing workplace preoccupations with technical and administrative skills. It can be more satisfying to teach art librarianship to practising librarians than to students of librarianship with differing backgrounds, expectations and motivation. In Canada, there is a need for art library associations to be instruments of positive change, by offering courses and workshops, and especially by taking advantage of teleconferencing methods to extend educational programs to librarians and students across the country.

The financial situation of cultural institutions is becoming increasingly perilous, and two years into its new national mandate the Library of the National Gallery of Canada finds its resources absorbed by internal needs and local use. To sustain a vital presence in the community of art information specialists the Library must restrict its contributions to those which have modest or no resource imperatives: generously shared collections; well conceived services which are publicized and accessible; strengthened cataloguing to be shared; attention to preservation; development of expertise to be shared with colleagues and students; initiation and promotion of collaborative projects. As a federal body the National Gallery of Canada is excluded from funding sources available to others, but will support the projects of others. A national task force is needed to outline and develop a Canadian strategic plan for art libraries.

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.

Education for art librarianship varies in its provision in France, Russia, Mexico, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands, but hardly features at all in standard librarianship training programmes. Individuals have come to art librarianship by a number of routes, often involving the study of art history and/or the experience of working in an art library, but in some cases as practising artists. Staff exchanges are a potentially valuable component of the continuing education of art librarians which art library associations in several countries are making it their business to provide. These associations and, at the international level, the IFLA Section of Art Libraries, can facilitate the sharing of training materials, and the Section would do well to continue to pay attention to the continuing education of art librarians and perhaps to produce an outline of a core course for use worldwide, with local additions and variations.

Between 1969 and 1979, while it was establishing itself, ARLIS attracted the attention of art librarians in other countries, publicised and encouraged their activities, and in particular developed a close relationship with the new ARLIS/NA (ARLIS/North America). This phase culminated, in 1976, in the launch of the Art Libraries Journal, and in the organisation of an international conference at Brighton which inaugurated a new era of collaboration between art librarians around the world, initial plans for an ‘ARLIS International’ being put aside in favour of working within the framework of IFLA. ARLIS subsequently participated in the activities of the IFLA Round Table of Art Librarians and its successor, the IFLA Section of Art Libraries. More recently, ARLIS responded to the growth of an international community of art librarians by changing its name to ARLIS/UK & Eire (and later to ARLIS/UK & Ireland) and by relaunching the Art Libraries Journal; the winding up of its International Committee, far from representing a decline in the Society’s international activities, was a logical consequence of the fact that an international outlook had come to pervade virtually all of its work. ARLIS/UK & Eire hosted the IFLA Section of Art Libraries Pre-Conference at Brighton in 1987, and the Section’s Fourth European Conference, at Oxford, in 1992. While international activities may sometimes seem remote from the day-to-day work of art libraries, most British art librarians probably do now recognise the value of’a grapevine round the world’; furthermore, by ‘acting locally’ we are all helping to build the larger world of art librarianship.