Le public des bibliothèques d’art est très largement un public étudiant et cela oriente forcément la politique documentaire de celles-ci. Sans renier ce rôle, ces bibliothèques devraient se soucier davantage des liens qu’elles devraient entretenir avec les artistes en activité. Ceci passe par une offre documentaire adaptée et des services, notamment autour de l’actualité de la vie artistique internationale, et demande des compétences particulières.

Biennials have been central to the development of contemporary art for decades, but there is a paucity of published material specifically related to this subject. Documentation for these important exhibitions is not always made available and it is often difficult to acquire, posing an obstacle to current and future research across a number of areas within contemporary art, curating and art history. This article offers an overview of major current biennials and of the different sources of information they produce (catalogues, other printed material, online resources, archives), and surveys the secondary literature of the phenomenon. It also discusses specific collection development issues in libraries, from a research perspective, proposing a set of recommendations for best practice.

This article challenges the history and interpretation of the visual arts of Africa promulgated by much of the documentation on African art found in British art libraries — both that based on the colonial archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological approach, and that stemming from the influence of African arts on early twentieth century European art. Drawing parallels between the false picture of African history produced by colonial historians, and the perception of African art history by non-African art historians, the author draws attention to the need for Africans to document their own art, and to the lack of documentation on the contribution of Black artists to British cultural life.

The author is a South African artist and writer living in Britain, who will be exhibiting with the Midlands Art Group, Nottingham, January – February 1984. The article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the ARLIS/UK course ‘Visual art documentation for a multi-cultural society’, held on 11 November 1983 at the Commonwealth Institute, London.

A catalogue raisonné is the definitive, comprehensive, and annotated compilation of all the known works of an artist. Beyond the necessary, meticulous task of compilation of information, which typically takes years to complete, the need to keep the information updated is a perpetual concern. Because the lives of artworks continually evolve as ownership changes and exhibition and literature histories expand, publishing a catalogue raisonné in print presents a real challenge in keeping information current. This challenge is even more pronounced for active, living artists whose works completed subsequent to a published catalogue raisonné would require the publication of a new volume. A catalogue raisonné being ‘definitive’ actually evolves constandy, warranting a format that can accommodate that very flux. The Chuck Close catalogue raisonné, launched and maintained as an online publication, is used here to illustrate the advantages of digital publishing for catalogues raisonnés.

A survey of holdings of non-Western art in British, and some North American, art libraries has by and large confirmed that it is poorly represented, and that contemporary non-Western art is especially neglected. Libraries’ freedom to acquire material in this broad area may be restricted or defined by curricula, the interests of clients, and the availability of material, yet libraries which allow themselves to be thus constrained present a distorted and impoverished view of world art. Library classification schemes tend to favour Western art, with non-Western art sometimes being relegated to ‘crafts’ or ‘anthropology’, while subject descriptors sometimes employ inappropriate terminology.

This article gives an account of the research methods and editing procedures used to inform the production of two recent books, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists and ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979-1989, focusing on issues related to the use of interviews and documentary sources in Chinese contemporary art research. As well as drawing attention to a range of contingent factors impinging on the reliability of interviews and documentary sources within the particular discursive contexts of China and to ways of mitigating their effects, it argues for the productive possibilities of the serial use of interviews in combination with other texts as critical polylogues.

Asked about how artists use libraries, art librarians confirm that artists gather ideas from a wide spectrum of subjects and sources, beyond the scope of the art library; they also need images and other, specific, information which art libraries often can supply. Their approach is typically exploratory and intuitive; they are compulsive browsers, but are likely to be impatient of catalogs and only occasional users of standard references tools. They expect a lot of help from specialist librarians. Art libraries serving artists generally provide access to a wide range of images, and invariably house their collections on open stacks. Photocopying, including color copying, is an essential service, and other visual and ‘studio’ facilities may also be provided. As more and more visual and other relevant information is made available through electronic networks, art libraries can provide artists with assisted, convenient access to it.

The momentum which it is hoped will lead to the launch of an Italian art libraries’ association began with the IFLA conferences at Tokyo and Brighton. Subsequently, librarians in Florence joined together to organise the 3rd European Conference of the IFLA Section of Art Libraries which was held in Florence in November 1988. Meetings of Italian art librarians, called to discuss the formation of a national association, were held at Florence and, one month later, in Rome; as a result, a working group has been set up to consider a constitution. In spite of the lack of a strong tradition of cooperation, the progress which has already been made seems certain to continue.

Electronic mail makes it possible to exchange ideas and texts, and to seek answers to problems or to reference queries, immediately and easily. BITNET, a network for e-mail communication between academic bodies, originated in the USA in 1981 and now links 49 countries. Within BITNET, a mail distribution service, LISTSERV, facilitates specialised networking including ARLIS-L, a network for art librarians initiated by ARLIS/NA and hosted by the University of Kentucky. ARLIS-L was launched in 1990 and currently connects some 650 subscribers in 14 countries, not all of whom are members of ARLIS/NA. Anyone with a modem, a phone line, a personal computer and an e-mail address can access ARLIS-L; for those affiliated with academic institutions, access to e-mail networks is likely to be already catered for and free of charge. Existing subscribers are very enthusiastic about the ARLIS-L service. [A complementary network, VRA-L, is in place for those specifically interested in visual collections. Editor.]

Researchers in other disciplines use art resources. Interviews with a variety of researchers in the fields of medicine, literature, history, psychotherapy, and archaeology provide some insights into when, why, and how scholars turn to the study of art. Through informal discussions about their research experiences, these researchers reveal their ways of thinking and pursuing research, the relationship of their own disciplines to art and the frustrations and rewards of pursuing inter- or multi-disciplinary research.

The architectural heritage of the 20th century is peculiarly vulnerable; partly because modern architecture broke with tradition, it is less easily recognised as being historic and worthy of preservation. Furthermore, efforts to secure public appreciation of contemporary architecture have concentrated too narrowly on the ‘International Modern’ style at the expense of the actual diversity of this century, on certain architects at the expense of others, and on the individual building, seen by itself, at the expense of the larger environment of which it is part. To see twentieth century architecture whole, it is necessary to depend on not only buildings themselves (insofar as they survive in something like their original condition), and not only on publications (which have tended to reflect the promotion of Modernism), but also on archival sources and above all, on the private archives of architects. The value of such archives derives not only from handsome architectural drawings, which institutions are always eager to acquire, but also from account books, publicity material, models, photographs, and notebooks, and from the integrity and coherence of all this material which belongs together; it is probably the challenge represented by such a range of material which accounts for the paucity of architectural archives in the public sphere. Fortunately, a new climate of interest in architecture, which has seen the establishment of several museums of architecture and the emergence of ‘l’archivisme’ – a re-interpreting of architectural styles of the past, drawing on archival sources and influencing contemporary architectural practice via exhibition design in particular – augurs well for the future of architectural archives. In France, the Institut Français d’Architecture has been responsible for archives of 20th century architecture since 1980, and since 1988 has operated an information centre for private architectural archives in Paris and the surrounding area. Other regional architectural archives are being set up; it is to be hoped that the resulting network will help to foment a spirit which will lead to the establishment of a museum of architecture in Paris, while at the same time providing a safety-net to ensure the well-being of private architectural archives.

Cataloguing Cultural Objects (CCO) is a standards-based project developed under the auspices of the Visual Resources Association (VRA). CCO addresses the metadata needs of communities that work with a broad range of artistic or cultural works and associated images of those works. CCO provides guidelines for selecting, ordering and formatting descriptive data used to populate catalog records. This article gives the background to the project and the involvement of the user communities in the development of the guide, as well as describing future directions.

Papunya Tula Artists is a company owned and directed by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert, predominantly from the Luritja and Pintupi language groups. It currently has 49 shareholders and represents around 120 artists. The broad aims of the company are to promote individual artists, and to provide economic development for the communities to which they belong, thereby preserving and extending their traditional culture. Towards the end of 1993 the Art Gallery of New South Wales entered into a formal partnership with the company to assist it in preserving, copying and providing access to their immensely important archival records. The project, which at first seemed straightforward and easily manageable, raised a number of important issues about the provision of archival services for Indigenous art and provides a useful case study for reflecting on these.

The inter-relationship between art librarians and artists/designers in the public library sector in America has been a reality since the early 20th century when libraries were organized into subject departments. This specialized clientele is eclectic and ranges from novices to the most accomplished artists and includes architects, art directors, illustrators, calligraphers, craftspeople and photographers in addition to painters, sculptors and graphic artists. Materials and services in public art libraries are highly diversified and the literature of other disciplines is also readily available. The increase in art exhibitions and special collections is noted in addition to a new focus on information for career opportunities, art law and the handicapped. Current developments set the stage for the continuing symbiotic relationship between public art librarians and artists/designers into the 21st century.

This article explores how our understanding of the materiality of knowledge has changed during the 20th century and how these meanings got incorporated into the concept of information. Special attention is given to Paul Otlet, the founding father of documentation, and to Norbert Wiener, the founding father of cybernetics. Furthermore, there is the question of what these changes that surround the notion of information imply for the architectural conception of the library. If the current discourse treats the library no longer as a space of books but as an information space, what implications does this evolution have for the architecture of the contemporary library? What is this information space that architects are required to articulate and to interpret?

Modern and contemporary books, easily replaceable in the internet age, are weeded from collections and disposed of because of their poor quality materials and construction. For an art library, where obsolescence is rarely an issue, the 20th- and 21st-century book can be a problem. Rare and seminal works in our collections are crumbling because they are acidic or perhaps they just cannot withstand the handling (and photocopying). We have become alert to the conservation of books from the hand-press period, but do not always know what to do with recent publications, or we cannot afford to undertake the measures necessary. As the artist’s book as an art form reaches its 50th birthday, we highlight the conservation of one such volume, in hopes of opening up discussion about the care of our contemporary treasures.

Iconclass is a classification of subjects, themes and motifs in Western art. It was developed and published in Holland, at the University of Leiden, with financial aid from both the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z. W.O.) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Iconclass is used in a growing number of projects, whether computerised or not. One of these projects could be the Witt Library pilot project, discussed elsewhere in this issue of the Art Libraries Journal (pp. 27-31).

In this paper the classification as such is briefly explained, mainly with the help of two examples: scenes from the stories of St. Antony Abbot and Hercules. Information on the alphabetical index to the classification is given, mainly because this extensive part of Iconclass is something more than the usual index to a publication.

Applications of the classification are dealt with in diagrammatic form; one application, the Iconclass bibliography, is discussed in greater detail.

A typical morning in a typical art college library is described. Ways in which art students use libraries, and the materials they require, are summarised. The fact that art students can get by without using libraries is noted in discussion of advantages and disadvantages of decentralised art libraries and of the centralisation of art library resources in libraries of wider scope. This paper was delivered to the course on ‘The Literature of Art and Architecture’, organised by ARLIS with the Library Association, in London on 6th December 1979.

The number of North American art museums with a presence on the internet has more than doubled since 1999. This is not surprising given the power of new media to transform the experiences that museum visitors have with our cultural institutions. Every year museums attract thousands of visitors to view, both in person and online, their specialized collections and unique exhibitions. Developing in tandem with these resources and largely unfamiliar to the general, museum-going public, the libraries and archives of these institutions have contributed to the research mission, educational programming, documentary history, and curatorial functions of museums in countless ways. In addition, especially for art historians and other scholars, museum libraries and archives have been and continue to be increasingly valuable for primary and secondary sources, including artists’ correspondence, diaries, sketches, hard-to-find monographs, exhibition records and sales catalogues. What is unclear, however, is the extent to which resources in art museum libraries and archives are being documented, preserved and made accessible online. This research is perhaps the first of its kind to evaluate, on a small scale and during a span of twelve years, the web presence of 22 North American art museum libraries and archives.