Originally founded as the library of the British Museum, the British Library has since 1973 been the United Kingdom’s national library, and has increasingly played a leadership role in co-operation and the co-ordination of library services in this country. Responses to its 1998 Strategic Review emphasised the importance of the Library’s collections in underpinning its services to support scholarship and research. But the Library is no longer able to collect as extensively as in its early years. As part of the new partnership programme intended to optimise national provision the Library is keen to work closely with ARLIS/UK & Ireland, and with the institutions with collections of national importance in the visual arts, to identify research needs and patterns of use and to establish ways of collecting, preserving and providing access to material to meet those needs.

Fine arts and culture have existed in British Columbia from the time that the First Peoples came to the North Pacific coast of Canada. Vancouver’s first fine arts library was established in 1930 at the Vancouver Public Library; significant collections have subsequently been developed at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and the University of British Columbia. They serve a diverse clientele: students, artists and researchers. Outlook, a province-wide network, provides access via the Internet to library catalogues of public, college and institution libraries throughout the Province.

In the last half-century exhibition catalogues have completely changed in appearance. Fifty years ago they were usually small pamphlets, which often simply listed the works of art in a show. Today catalogues are frequently substantial monographs, generally profusely illustrated. But a more complex change has also taken place, in line with major developments in the museum and exhibition world. This change can be illustrated by looking at some of the features of catalogues today, such as their production costs, function, and distribution.

Although official censorship in the Soviet Union ceased over ten years ago, the effects in art and art libraries are still felt. Censored books were marked with a hexagon and relegated to closed stacks, which for many years were off limits to the public and library staff alike. Some of the banned material in the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature is analysed here in an attempt to establish the reason why certain items were seen by the authorities as too harmful to be acceptable for general circulation. The fate of the second “enemy” perceived by the Soviet censors, the original works of art and architecture, is also described.

Local government re-organisation, educational changes and increasing costs of materials are just some of the external threats faced by UK public libraries. Internally the threats come chiefly from the need for financial savings, but they can come from our own unwillingness to make change. However it is an exciting time, with new initiatives coming from government particularly in the areas of educational development and information technology, and opportunities for greater cohesion in planning and management. All these provide challenges for librarians in the visual arts.

Partnership is the watchword throughout Europe currently and libraries, museums and archives, with their wide areas of common interest, are well placed for collaborative working. In particular, technology is opening up the possibility of ever closer collaboration in the creation of a wealth of resources in digital form. While the United Kingdom plans to use digitisation, allied to changed administrative arrangements at national level, to integrate its museum, library and archive activities, the developments in collaboration in these areas in Europe also repay scrutiny.

Exhibition catalogues are a key resource for art and design research, but smaller and more ephemeral catalogues are difficult for art librarians to collect. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a period of interest in the UK in the problems of collecting and cataloguing exhibition catalogues sparked off research into fresh approaches to the problem. In line with the resulting recommendations the National Art Library, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, has developed two key initiatives. These are the Exhibition Catalogues Programme and a joint project with the British Library to increase access to smaller exhibition catalogues. Both are showing clear benefits for national access to published exhibition documentation.

The Melva J. Dwyer Award was established in honour of Melva Dwyer, a founding member of CARLIS, upon her retirement after 31 years of distinguished service on behalf of Canadian art librarianship and as Fine Arts Librarian at the University of British Columbia. The award is presented to the best Canadian art reference work, broadly interpreted, produced by a Canadian author. Unlike other awards, the Dwyer Award is a limited edition print by Calgary artist Susan Ford that incorporates both the concept and title of the prize. Eight awards have been presented so far, in addition to the first of the ten prints which was presented to Melva Dwyer in 1987.

Art books in the UK during the Second World War were highly visible and in great demand. Despite paper rationing, stocks destroyed by enemy bombing, and military demands on authors and artists, new types of art book were launched to great acclaim. The archives of Penguin and Phaidon reveal both the constraints under which publishers were forced to operate, and the ideas behind initiatives such as the Penguin Modern Painters series, or Phaidon’s early monographs. Both publishing houses sought to extend the market for art books by producing large quantities at low prices, and maintaining a reputation for high quality texts, design and reproductions.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various government departments and several private companies engaged in an aggressive campaign to populate and develop western Canada. The cornerstone of this campaign was its publication programme. Over 300 pamphlets and brochures were published to advertise the ‘free’ lands of the Northwest. The advertising programme promoted rural settlement, depicting an idyllic landscape strongly reminiscent of ‘home’ and appealing to a young, male Anglo-Saxon population. While the campaign was successful in attracting immigrants, the reality was not always so idyllic and many settlers left. Despite the difficulties, others stayed and built rewarding lives in ‘Canada West: the new homeland’.

Les bibliothèques des musées français possèdent un patrimoine considérable, divers, original qui doit sa spécificité à l’expertise de leurs conservateurs. Ils ont le souci constant de rassembler une documentation de haut niveau afin de mener leurs recherches. Ces trésors, et cette documentation, acquis sur des fonds publics, devraient-ils être mis à la disposition d’un plus large public, comme nous en avons de nombreux exemples en Europe, en Amérique du Nord? Malgré quelques réussites exemplaires, la plupart des bibliothèques et centres de documentation des musées français n’ont pas les équipements et le personnel nécessaires à cette mission plus large. Cet article suggère quelques pistes qui pourront leur permettre d’affirmer leur place essentielle dans le réseau des bibliothèques d’art, tout en restant des bibliothèques de recherche.

Les bibliothèques publiques, en France, connaissent un essor sans précédent: en 25 ans (1972-96), on a construit 1.400.000m2 de locaux pour les bibliothèques municipales (de 355.000 à 1.719.000 m2); le personnel est passé de 3.000 emplois à 17.000; le nombre des usagers inscrits a augmenté de 1.182.000 à 6.449.000. Pour autant, la situation n’engendre pas un optimisme sans nuance. Deux éléments font que les bibliothécaires, et leurs tutelles, ont des questions, des interrogations, des inquiétudes: d’une part, l’identité de la bibliothèque, qui, du fait de son histoire, est complexe et, aujourd’hui, de plus en plus incertaine; d’autre part, les évolutions économiques, techniques et politiques qui créent des tensions grandissantes entre la demande de bibliothèque et l’offre de bibliothèque.

The following words preface Francoise Cachin’s introduction to Marie-Thérèse Cavignac’s Les bibliothèques des musées en Aquitaine:

This description is just as valid for the rest of France. Considerable effort has been put into the modernisation of French museums during the last twenty years or so and their libraries have benefited from this renewal as well. I would like in this paper to describe some of the strengths of libraries and documentation centres in museums of art, and to try and define their role within their institutions and within the network of French art libraries.

With the opening of its Murray Point Summer School of Art at Emma Lake in 1936, the University of Saskatchewan became the first Canadian university to establish an outdoor art school. Emma Lake is in northern Saskatchewan, and every attempt was made by the University to preserve the virgin forest in the area where the classes were held. Although primarily developed for the benefit of Saskatchewan residents, the workshops became nationally and internationally known, and acclaimed painters, sculptors and critics from across Canada, Europe and the United States made the trip north. For over twenty years students attending the school produced an annual scrapbook documenting their experience; the photographs and illustrations from those yearbooks provide both interesting social commentary and excellent documentation of a learning environment students considered ‘rich, deep and significant’.

The Artists’ Papers Register aims to record the papers and primary sources of artists, designers and craftspeople located in publicly accessible collections in the United Kingdom. Ignorance of these primary sources can compromise the quality of art historical study, and it is true that it has until now been difficult to find specific information about much of this material and its location. The history and methodology of the project are explained here, while a number of examples demonstrate the diversity of the material that the Register can be used to locate. Plans for the future development of the Artists’ Papers Register should ensure that primary source material plays an increased and invaluable role in the study of art and design history.

Public libraries in France are experiencing unprecedented growth: in 25 years (1971-1996) 1,400,000 m of accommodation has been constructed for municipal libraries (an increase from 355,000 m to 1,719,000 m2); staffing has grown from 3,000 employees to 17,000; the number of registered users has risen from 1,182,000 to 6,449,000. For all that, the situation does not give rise to unquestioning optimism. Two concerns exercise librarians and their governing bodies: on one hand the identity of the library, historically complex and currently more and more unsettled; on the other hand economic, technical and political developments which are creating growing tensions between the demands made on libraries and what they can actually supply.