After several previous attempts to co-operate in post-war Belgium, art librarians in the Dutch-speaking part of the country have since 2000 grouped together under the name Overleg Kunstbibliotheken Vlaanderen (OKBV). The international acronym ARLIS/Flanders symbolises the close connection that is felt to the other art library organisations around the world. A year after its establishment, OKBV became the first official ‘intersectoral’ committee of the Flemish Library Association (Vlaamse Vereniging voor Bibliotheek, Archief en Documentatiewezen – VVBAD). The activities that have been organised since then are many and diverse. Meetings and projects about automation, cataloguing, collection development, promotion, professional development and the preservation of art publications have received the attention and support of many, the main goal always being to stimulate co-operation among art librarians in Flanders and – even better – in Belgium and beyond.

As stated in its collection policy, the library of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen supports the goals of the museum through collecting, indexing and providing access to documentary information to support art historical research within and outside the institution. The library’s collection development has a double focus: the exhaustive collecting and indexing of collection documentation, and the collecting of information about Western art history from the 13th century up to and including the 20th century (in analogy with the museum collection). While very specialised in content and in its in-depth indexing system, the library scans a broader scope to satisfy the fluctuating information needs of the museum staff. Today, collection development and management is becoming more and more co-operative, through various partnerships in Antwerp and also those with similar art libraries, especially where online access to datasets and electronic resources is concerned.

Although the library of the Fashion Museum of Province of Antwerp is only five years old, it already boasts an exciting history. Evolved from the collection of the national Vrieselhof Textiles and Costume Museum, the Fashion Museum Library opened its doors in 2002, in the heart of Antwerp, the Fashion City. This article relates the history of this library, with a look at both today and the future, attempting to pinpoint the uniqueness of what it means to manage a collection on the phenomenon of ‘contemporary fashion’.

Between 1965 and 1985, the library of the FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen acquired three large collections: that of the library of the Association Belge de Photographie, the collection of magazines from Fritz L. Gruber and the company library of the photographic firm Agfa-Gevaert. The bibliographic activities associated with the history of photography were started in 1978 at the European Society for the History of Photography and resulted in a four-part History of photography: a bibliography of books, published 1989 to 1999. The FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen produced an augmented version of this bibliography on CD-ROM in 2003.

The Bibliotheca Wittockiana in Brussels houses an impressive array of bindings that shows the glories of this very special decorative art. The collection does not aim to be an exhaustive historical survey, but reflects the taste of one man, Michel Wittock, beginning with his early interest in 16th-century Italian bindings and later those of 19th-century France, and culminating in many beautiful examples of abstraction in French and Belgian bindings of the 20th century. These works are housed in a purpose-built 1980s building designed by Emmanuel de Callatay and extended 15 years later by Wittock’s architect son Charly, and are shared with an appreciative public in the museum’s reading room and through regular displays in the three large exhibition spaces.

In 1644, the famous Dutch scholar Nicolas Heinsius wrote to his friend Johannes Fredericus Gronovius that there were only two important libraries in Antwerp: that of the Jesuits and that of Balthasar Moretus II, the most important printer of his time, who had supplied him with some manuscripts of Ovid. At that point the catalogue of Moretus’s library comprised 2985 titles, nearly 400 more than the library of Leuven University with its 2600 titles. Heinsius tried several times to convince Moretus to sell his library but, fortunately for Antwerp, Moretus refused to do so. In this article I will demonstrate why we should be so delighted with Moretus’s decision to keep his library intact and preserve it for the future.

In 1987 the Vlaams Theater Instituut (VTi) was born, as a result of the need to support and identify the ambitions of a new generation of performing artists in Flanders and Brussels, to document and investigate the context of this turbulent but artistically exceptional period, and to develop appropriate policy instruments for this burgeoning practice. Twenty years on, and the artistic and social context has changed radically. Initiatives that were played out on the fringes ‘back then’ we now see right at the centre of things. Today the need to keep documenting, investigating and reflecting is just as relevant as it was in those days. Moreover, the VTi can now explore the value of 20 years of metadata creation in new ways.

The Rubenianum is an internationally renowned research centre for the study and documentation of 16th- and 17th-century Flemish art, especially art by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens the elder. Located next to the historic garden of Rubens House in the centre of Antwerp, it was created in 1947 to house the documentation that was generated during the renovation of the site. In 1963 its collection was considerably enriched by the archives of the art historian Ludwig Burchard. The Rubenianum also houses the ‘Centrum voor de Vlaamse Kunst van de 16e en de 17e eeuw’ which publishes the Corpus Rubenianum. A major project since 2004 has been the digital resource ‘Rubensonline’, which includes all known works by Rubens in public collections in Belgium.