When Sir Kyffin Williams, RA died in 2006 he bequeathed a large section of his estate to the National Library of Wales (NLW) – an institution with which the artist, most known for his landscape paintings of north-west Wales, had a long association. Combined with material already in the NLW’s collections, there are now over 200 works in oil, over 1200 works on paper and a comprehensive archive held at Aberystwyth. The collection’s presence in a library rather than museum or gallery raises questions of how the work can be displayed or exhibited. In this essay I will give some background to this collection and the wider art holdings of the National Library of Wales before discussing how geo-spatial approaches are being used to display this collection digitally. This work is being completed as a collaborative Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) PhD project between Aberystwyth University School of Art and the National Library of Wales. KESS is part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) through the European Union’s Convergence Programme (West Wales and the Valleys) administered by the Welsh Government.

How can an open access publishing and distribution model benefit research in contemporary art? In 2013 Artexte, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting contemporary art in Canada, launched the e-artexte open access digital repository to offer self-archiving services to publishers, authors and artists in Canadian contemporary art. Although the fine arts community has generally been slow to adopt open access, Canadian contemporary arts publishers, many of whom have small budgets and limited resources, are finding the open access e-artexte repository an effective means of increasing distribution of and access to their publications.

In February 1992 a magazine called The Connoisseur died. Born in September 1901, it had lived a long life, and was the oldest of the once great triumvirate of British art periodicals, alongside The Burlington Magazine (1903) and Apollo (1925). While the latter two have survived into the 21st century, in 1982 The Connoisseur went into retirement and moved to America. This paper will tell the story of the last 15 years of the magazine’s life, from its happy 75th birthday through to an ignominious final eight months.

The greatest art library in the Netherlands returned to its original rooms inside the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. How can this library with its own rich history serve the demands of a 21st-century user? What might be the appropriate measures to counter the struggles of the first weeks after the grand re-opening? After more than a decade of reconstruction and renovation the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam was reopened on 13 April 2013. The inside of the museum has been completely transformed and the building itself has been restored to its original splendour. The largest art research library in the Netherlands has become accessible to the general public, seven days a week from 10 am to 5 pm. More then 10,000 visitors a day are eager to explore the museum as well as its unique 19th-century reading room designed by P.J.H Cuypers. But how can the original concept be adapted to present day demands?

For institutions operating in the field of arts and culture, taking part in subsidised programs is a favourable – not to say often the only – way to conduct large-scale projects. The many options of participating in various EU-funded grant programs provide cultural facilities with the opportunity not only to internally optimise their holdings but also to closely co-operate with partner institutions from the cultural, as well as from other industries, thus exchanging knowledge and experience, professionally networking on a cross-border level, and laying the corner stone for potential future projects. As a positive side effect, the interconnectedness and often public-oriented aims almost always imply potentially high publicity effects for all participants. Notwithstanding the undisputed benefits accompanied by EU-projects, it must be kept in mind that they also involve a great deal of administrative effort that must not be underestimated.

RDA, RDA, RDA: a three-letter initialism which has both tormented and engaged cataloguers over the last few years. The Courtauld Institute of Art was among the first UK libraries to implement RDA; however, it is not a typical UK RDA early adopter being both small and specialist. This article describes the library’s experiences of RDA implementation. Issues covered include planning for RDA, designing an art-specific RDA training programme and the challenges of fitting RDA to typical art library materials. Common themes emerge that include the high importance placed upon collaboration and sharing resources in the RDA age; dealing with the unknown and the unanswerable; and asking ontological questions about the art documentation materials being catalogued.