Class N is the schedule for the fine arts in the Library of Congress classification scheme. LCC reflects the needs of a general research library but number construction is flexible and the scheme is kept current. It has worked well for many art and architecture collections, but what are some of the issues with the scheme? Can a general scheme satisfy the needs of the focused collection in a special library? And there is the unasked and unanswered question: does shelf classification matter in the 21st century, especially for digital materials?

NYARC is a consortium of New York art resources, initially including the libraries of Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The Metropolitan was not part of the Arcade (integrated libraries system) programme funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and withdrew its designation as a NYARC entity in December 2010. This article gives a brief history of NYARC and examines whether it achieved its aims of sharing resources, making them more accessible to the public, and saving money.

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.

The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the world’s great architectural research libraries. In addition to its commitment to maintaining a comprehensive collection of bibliographic and archival materials for architecture, the library, its staff and services directly support academic programs in architecture, urban planning, historic preservation, art history and archaeology, as well as the liberal arts education of undergraduates. The Avery is also home to the Avery index to architectural periodicals. As publisher of this leading abstracting and indexing resource for research in architecture and related topics, the Avery is solely responsible for all editorial, business and technical operations and serves as an authoritative source for the terminology and literature of the field.

Working in a large university library provides daily challenges in giving appropriate advice to students and researchers when they search for art history material. One of the biggest of these is how to choose the best databases to use, and the survey described below aimed to provide better information on which to base decisions about which the library should subscribe to. Many libraries face the same problems. What is really covered in the different databases? And how do they communicate with other library systems and electronic resources?

The new AGORHA database at the INHA in Paris gives access to numerous information resources of value to art history researchers internationally. These include the catalogues of the Institute’s Library and its Jacques Doucet collection, which record the details of its heritage collections and archives, and the entire run of the Répertoire d’art et d’archéologie (1910-1972). It also hosts an increasing number of research databases that are a product of the research and teaching activities of the Galerie Colbert, which works in partnership with specialist education bodies throughout France. AGORHA will be online on the web by the time this article is published.

Creating an adapted classification scheme is a solution frequently adopted by art libraries to arrange their collections. However, writing the scheme is only the start: an adapted scheme needs continuous updating to maintain its fitness for purpose. With new art forms, new directions in art history research, new geographic boundaries and new physical formats, there is no shortage of work to be done on an adapted art classification scheme. Using examples from the Courtauld classification scheme, this article explores some of the issues involved in dealing with an adapted classification, and charts the fluctuating relationship between the adapted scheme and its original. The author concludes that once an adapted scheme has been selected for an art library, this represents a lifetime commitment to adaptation.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the UK’s national museum of art and design, recently created a new centre for public learning through creative design. The development process was key to the project, which has resulted in one of the most innovative and attractive learning spaces in any museum today. Research, consultation and collaboration, involving the people who are going to use the building and the architects/designers from the outset, has been an approach that has worked very successfully.

From the 1970s onwards Danish contributions were sent to the international art bibliography published by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Broader Nordic co-operation began when the Bibliography of the history of art (later the International bibliography of art) was established in 1990. Throughout the next two decades, art libraries in each of the five countries selected key material whose records were then submitted for publication. This collaboration came to an end in 2009 when the Getty announced that it could no longer continue to support the IBA on its own, although it would introduce free access via its website to the data for the years 1975 to 2007.

This article examines some of the problems associated with the initial classification and subsequent reclassification of a specialist Fine Art library. The Library at the then Chelsea School of Art was established in the early 1960s. It was unusual, ‘being predominantly a fine art (painting and sculpture) institution, with lesser responsibilities in design.’ Most ‘off the peg’ classification schemes do not incorporate enough flexibility for the detail required by such a specific collection, but do include large sections devoted to design subjects which were unnecessary at the time. It was decided, therefore, to create a bespoke scheme for the Chelsea collection, and this was adapted several times over the years to fit in with the changing landscape of art history and art education. In January 2005, Chelsea College of Art & Design relocated to a new unified site on Millbank, merging the three very specialised libraries: Manresa Road (Fine Art), Hugon Road (Interior and Spatial Design, Graphics and Illustration) and Lime Grove (Textiles and Public Art). One of the major challenges of this relocation was to bring all the collections together under one classification scheme.

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’.

Want to know about the practical steps involved in reclassifying an area of stock? What about some recommendations before undertaking such a task? This is the article for you as it provides answers developed from lessons learned during a real experience, in 2005, when the author completed a reclassification project during a six-month temporary contract at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design.

The Burlington Magazine, with its juxtaposition of art trade and academia, historicism and aestheticism, has occupied a unique role in the international art historical panorama since it was first published in 1903. From its very beginnings the magazine had produced a detailed printed index, which reflected the diversity of its contents. In 2005 the magazine received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation to produce a cumulative online index from 1903 to the present. The Burlington Index is now online, nearly complete and free for all to use. Why did the Burlington need an index when it was already included in JSTOR? How is the Burlington Index structured and what is it based on? What are its aims and limitations? The Burlington Index wants to be a vessel to navigate the ocean of free-text available on JSTOR; a tool for research to open up the contents of the Burlington to a new generation of readers and, ultimately, a magnifying glass to reveal the magazine as a primary source for research on the history of art history, the art market and the art press.

Photography has long been a part of the Library of Congress classification tables. At the time of its inclusion, photography was not considered an art form and thus was placed in the T – Technology schedule instead of the N – Fine Arts schedule. This article will discuss various aspects of photography classification, including its history, the reasons behind and development of alternative schedules, the challenges of classifying artists’ books with a photographic basis, and the feasibility of maintaining alternative schedules with the proliferation of shelf-ready books.