Since its foundation by Frits Lugt the Fondation Custodia/Institut Néerlandais has been a well-known institution on the Paris scene. It is one of many foreign cultural institutes in Paris, some of which - and specifically their libraries - are described in this article. The unique character of the Dutch library is highlighted, as well as the way in which it is adapting to new techniques. Of particular interest are the plans for the development of special links with other art libraries, such as the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris and the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) in the Hague.

Gaining access to primary research materials is critical to the support of research and learning. The Research Libraries Group’s initiatives to make archival materials, and museum objects and their records, available in an electronic environment are exploring the technical possibilities of achieving international, integrated access to textual and visual materials. That seamless web of resources so desired by researchers is getting ever closer to reality.

Sweeping technological changes took place a decade ago in the Local History Room of the Saskatoon Public Library that now allow customized online searches of its photograph collection of 50,000 images. The Room was established in 1966 to collect and preserve materials relating to the history of the Saskatoon area. The Saskatoon Public Library’s photo indexing project began in 1987 and recent forays into digitization and the Internet have heightened access to the collection. Staff now receive enquiries from around the world.

30% of the 40 Swedish members of ARLIS/Norden are museum libraries. Half of these are dedicated art libraries situated in the two major cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg. Most of them serve their parent organization as well as external users. Foremost amongst them is the Art Library at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, a somewhat tarnished crown jewel among Swedish art libraries, whose ability to serve this dual public has had a fluctuating history.

Co-operative efforts are being made to improve access to the large number of publications held in Dutch libraries specialising in the history of art. These include the PICA/NCC system run by the universities and the Royal Library, and the CD-ROM being produced by museum and other libraries which do not take part in PICA but which hold especially strong collections of exhibition and auction catalogues. The opening up of these collections on the Internet and on disk is expected to result in an increase in the number of students using museum libraries. Their role will inevitably change and this will have consequences for their own organisations, as is illustrated here by the current situation of the library of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

For many years the archive profession in the United Kingdom has tended to view highly structured cataloguing rules as a constraint, redundant in the light of the unique material with which it deals. Times are changing however and, with the advent of three new standards over the past six years, archivists are beginning to recognise that, far from being the straitjacket they had previously imagined, such standards do in fact provide the key to freedom in the brave new world of information technology opportunities.

The Uris Library and Teacher Resource Center is the only library in the Metropolitan Museum of Art open to all Museum visitors. Its 6,000 books, 900 videos and growing numbers of CD-ROMs and electronic resources serve ever increasing numbers of the Museum’s public. Students and teachers, Museum members, Museum educators and volunteers, as well as general Museum visitors all use the Library.

The prairie city of Winnipeg boasts a thriving community of artist-run centres. Profiles of each of these centres, derived partly from their own web sites, provide a virtual tour of this community, whose history, programming, projects and initiatives sustain and promote experimental and contemporary visual culture in the city.

Should museums open their libraries to the general public? This is a delicate question, widely discussed within and outside the museum community. The lack of a consensus on this topic made it one of the key points at the Libraries in museums – museums in libraries conference, held in Moscow in May 1999. While the recently-established ‘Open Museum’ Association in Russia aims to make all museum activities open to the public, and to develop interactive communication with both real and virtual museum visitors, libraries are not yet one of its priorities. However Irina Timasheva firmly advocates changing the role and mission of museum libraries, as has been done at the Samara Museum, and demonstrates the benefits to both museum and local community. Even if this ‘first swallow is not yet a Spring’, there is already a quite noticeable trend towards the open museum library in Russia.

Many problems beset early digital interactive publishing on videodiscs and LaserDiscs, while the rapid development of the Internet, technically and in terms of user base, has in most fields now supplanted the CD-ROM. The future for off-line digital resources in the cultural field will depend on one hand on the success of the current (very slow) launch of DVD with its greatly increased storage capacity compared with CD-ROM and, on the other hand, on the widening and cheapening of Internet bandwidth. And the launch of high definition digital television will almost certainly change everything yet again.

How can the Ontario archival community best provide comprehensive documentary evidence of activities in the visual arts? A strategy for preserving the documentation needs to co-ordinate the efforts not only of the various collecting repositories in the province, but also of the people within the arts community who are generating records of their activities. Attempts already being made by Ontario archivists to ensure visual arts records are acquired and retained could be enhanced by improved education of everyone concerned.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is a partner in the Electronic Library Image Service for Europe (ELISE) project, which is part-funded by the European Community. ELISE I began in 1993 and was completed in 1995. The V&A’s National Art Library is particularly involved in the second phase of the project, ELISE II, which began in 1996 and is due to finish in 1999. This paper explains the background to ELISE and considers the implications for the V&A and the wider art and design community.

Western thinking, which is predominantly linear and analytical, does not adequately give access to the complexities of Inuit visual culture. However hypertext offers new possibilities for information management, and the aboriginal communities are using it creatively to share information, as for example in the Internet record of the development of Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut. This article examines how and why interactive multimedia were the means chosen to develop a master’s thesis on the Inuit artist Jessie Oonark.

The Hector Library started life in 1867 as a science library with a strong geological bent. The establishment of Te Papa, New Zealand’s new national museum, in 1992 led to a merger with the erstwhile National Art Gallery Research Library, renowned for its resources on contemporary art. The enlarged Hector, with dual specialities in art and natural history, is part of the re-designed information package servicing Te Papa visitors (both in person and distant) at the Museum’s new waterfront site which opened to the public in February 1998. This paper outlines the package, focusing on the Hector’s collections and services, and also posits the relevance of its resources in the context of global art documentation.

Aquarelle is a flagship project developing the Information Network on Cultural Heritage, funded under the European Commission’s Telematics Applications Programme. It has created a distributed multimedia information system, offering access to interrelated multimedia reference documents and primary data that describe the cultural heritage of Europe. It aims to create the technology to enable a service which would provide uniform access to the varied collections of data held by museums, art galleries and other cultural organisations throughout Europe.

Publications exchange has long been an accepted part of the acquisition process for many art libraries, particularly art museum libraries. A recent survey suggests that, in the digital environment, this may not continue. What will take its place?