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‘In close co-operation’: eight years of ARLIS/Flanders in Belgium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Béatrice De Clippeleir*
Affiliation:
Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst, Sint-Lucasbibliotheek, Zwartezustersstraat 34, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2008

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References

1. Coekelberghs, Denis, ‘Instruments et centres de documentation pour l’histoire de l’art en Belgique,Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art = Belgisch tijdschrift voor oudheidkunde en kunstgeschiedenis, no. 40 (1971): 128130.Google Scholar
2. Stroobants, A., ‘Verslag van de studiedag Museumbibliotheken’, VVBAD Info: mededelingenblad van de Vlaamse Vereniging voor Bibliotheek-, Archief- en Documentatiewezen, 16, no. 11 (1990): 57.Google Scholar
3. Participants of the first OKBV meeting in Ghent, May 15th 2000 were Béatrice De Clippeleir (Sint-Lucasbibliotheek, Ghent – chair); Michel Kolenberg (Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussels); Myriam Lemmens (Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg); Peter Rogiest (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen); Saskia Scheltjens (Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Ostend - secretary); Dieter Suis (Modemuseum Provincie Antwerpen); Veerle Verhasselt (Museum Schone Kunsten, Ghent); Lucie Zabeau (Centrale Bibliotheek, Universiteit Ghent).Google Scholar
4. In Wallonia - the French-speaking community in Belgium - and in Brussels, co-operation between libraries is traditionally more informal and less organised.Google Scholar
5. The archives of OKBV-L can be accessed at http://ls.kuleuven.be/archives/okbv.html.Google Scholar
6. Building the website and the discussion list OKBV-L became a master’s thesis for Jens De Groot at the Library School in Leuven in 2004.Google Scholar
7. The directory was originally a master’s thesis by Els Milh for the Library School in Ghent in 2001. Updates were added by the editorial board of the OKBV website.Google Scholar
12. There is no national union catalogue in Belgium. The largest union catalogue, the Collectieve Catalogus van België = Catalogue Collectif de Belgique (ccb), contains the metadata about books from all Belgian university libraries and some research institutes. It is only available as a licensed CD-ROM using WebSpirs/Silverplatter technology. The most recent version was issued in 2002. The only place where it can be accessed online without charge is via the Royal Library, http://www.iscientia.net/webspirs/start.ws?username=cc-kbr&password=ccb. A virtual Belgian union catalogue of those same libraries has been under construction since 2001. The release of a public prototype using the open source product Vufind has been scheduled for 2008.Google Scholar
14. The presentations made at the symposium Acquisitie in kunst- en erfgoedbibliotheken, 26 February 2008, are hyperlinked in an outline of the day at http://www.wbad.be/node/3183.Google Scholar
15. 2007 saw the start of the project ‘Dublin Core is enough’. It organises workshops and unconferences to help (systems) librarians from art, performing arts and music libraries to learn how they can offer their data in such a way that designers, or the general public for that matter, can combine it into new rich interfaces, http://dublincoreisvoldoende.pbwiki.com/.Google Scholar