Since the mid-1980s, a number of initiatives in Europe and the United Kingdom have sought to promote the participation of the disabled in artistic activities. A focal point for a European network linking organisations and individuals throughout Europe is provided by a European Resource Centre, based at Hertfordshire College of Art and Design in the United Kingdom, which publishes the journal Atria and which maintains the European Arts and Disability Database. Some other organisations publish their own newsletters, while certain other databases can provide relevant information.

Documentation of Spain’s artistic heritage can be found in many places throughout the country. Primary sources are scattered in different archives, including general historical, and regional and municipal, as well as ecclesiastical, military, family, and academy archives. Publications essential to the study of Spanish culture, and some drawings, prints, and photographs, can be found in libraries, notably but by no means exclusively the Biblioteca Nacional. The growth of national awareness of the nation’s artistic heritage can be traced in books and other documents, from the activities of Philip II in the 16th century, to the introduction of photography and the development of its role in recording, multiplying images of, affirming, and popularising, a patrimony worthy of preservation.

John Cotton Dana, who died in 1929, had been Librarian of the Newark Public Library since 1902. Among many other achievements, he was responsible for the development of remarkable art collections in the Library, including a collection of prints, and of a Picture Collection of visual images; the programme of art exhibitions he organised in the Library led to the founding of the Newark Museum. The collections Dana initiated continued to grow after his death, guided by his inspiration: they are of regional and even national importance and, via library networking, serve the whole state of New Jersey; the scope of the print collection has been extended to include several categories of printed ephemera, including shopping bags.

Art libraries are cultural treasure-houses, responsible for the preservation and organisation of materials which document art in all its variety. Art librarians should be able to adopt a broad view, capable of appreciating different cultural traditions and able to stand aside from current fashions; at the same time, those responsible for specialised libraries should commit themselves with enthusiasm and dedication to the particular traditions represented by their collections. Cooperation and networking is essential to link art libraries and their representation of different aspects of human culture, nationally and worldwide. While art libraries enable research, they also have a much wider educational role and should ideally be accessible to all. However, the provision of access to the library’s cultural wealth, which (legal considerations permitting) can be facilitated by such new technologies as videodiscs, has financial implications which may suggest that some services should be charged for or that libraries must seek sponsorship.

For much of his life the Rumanian-born artist Arthur Segal championed the cause of picture lending for the benefit of the public and as a means of helping artists to earn a living. In Germany in the mid-1920s, Segal put forward his plans for lending institutions for works of art, akin to lending libraries for books. Widespread support was not forthcoming, and an experimental scheme organised by an artists’ association in Berlin ceased in 1927. Segal could give only qualified support to an alternative concept of hire purchase. Arthur Segal settled in England in 1936; some years after his death, his ideas contributed to the devising of an art loan scheme, launched by the London Borough of Holborn public library, which featured the work of local artists. Segal deserves to be remembered; his life and achievements have been celebrated by exhibitions in Berlin and Cologne, and the following article has been translated into English so that his ideas and endeavours can be more widely appreciated.

The Sous-Section des Bibliothèques d’Art gathered in a successful and perhaps historic meeting, at St-Etienne, in October 1989. In spite of their different types, and in spite of being linked with central government in differing ways, French art libraries are collaborating more and more. Plans for five projects -on periodical indexing, periodical microfilming, the adoption of a thesaurus, the cataloguing of exhibition catalogues, and networking - were discussed, as was the creation of a new national art library which will occupy the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale and which can be expected to play a key role in coordinating future developments. A resolution regarding the national art library is appended.

A bibliography of bibliographies relevant to the study of the fine arts in Spain. For the majority of entries, the presence of a copy of the work in question in either the Biblioteca Nacional or the Instituto de Información y Documentación en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (ISOC), both in Madrid, is indicated; for items in the Biblioteca Nacional a shelf number is also provided.

Museums, archives and libraries comprise a spectrum of collecting institutions whose interests range from unique objects to published information. Libraries have pioneered the application of both co-operative and automated systems to their collections; museums are following their example, and are innovating in the provision of interactive information technology. Dialogue between museum and library professionals is to be encouraged, not least at an international level.

In the United States, as elsewhere, cultural history represents, and is itself shaped by, many points of view. The existence of differing views of cultural history is reflected, in the United States, by the variety and independence of cultural institutions. Such a diversity of approaches does not facilitate the development of a nation-wide overview or of a national databank or national methodologies; however, progress is now being made in terms of cooperation and coordination, especially through the development and acceptance of standards which make different data systems compatible with one another.

The National Art Library, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, seeks to fulfil its national role by becoming the focal point of a wider network of libraries. In order to support this role, and to carry it forward into the 1990s, the Library has redesigned its management structure, developed a role as a training library for the art library profession, and applied a professional approach, involving the collection and consideration of management data, to the Library’s administration. Collection development has been redefined, shifting the emphasis from the past to the present; this has resulted in an increased intake of material, in spite of a frozen budget, with a consequent need for more space which will be provided through a reorganisation of the Library’s existing accommodation. A plan for the conservation of items in the Library’s collections is being devised. Automation, installed in 1990, brings with it further possibilities and the critical question of whether to prioritise the development of the collections or the development of access to the collections.

In 1989 the Art Libraries Journal published two reports on art libraries in Madrid, by Gabriele Musidlak-Schlott and Elena Santiago. The time is ripe to present a broader profile of this same topic, and this can be done by analysing and updating the information recently published in the Guía de las bibliotecas de arte de Madrid, a directory of art libraries in the city. The directory includes the libraries of those historic institutions dedicated to art teaching (academies and universities) and to the collection and preservation of works of art (museums); it also includes national, academic, public, and other kinds of general art libraries. Current problems faced by art libraries in Madrid are very much the same problems of all Spanish libraries: overcoming the difficulties experienced by users in seeking satisfaction of their information needs, achieving wider and more effective co-ordination, and catching-up with library automation.

In an age in which so much information is communicated through images, libraries can no longer exclude the ‘new technology of the image’. It is essential for libraries to respond to the challenge of the media, and to recognise, for example, the importance of television, which has a very visible and vital presence in the Bibliothèque publique d’information at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Ever since the invention of photography, France has been the home of a lively tradition of active, innovative interest in photography. This is reflected in the existence of the Centre national de la photographies and the Ecole nationale de la photographie, in collections and exhibitions of photographs, and recently in the use made of videodiscs, by both museums and libraries, as a means of storing images and making them accessible. Telecommunications offer the prospect of online access to a network linking image collections together as a single visual resource. The most serious obstacles to be overcome are neither technological nor financial: the legal question of copyright has to be addressed, while the muted interest of historians does not as yet represent an overwhelming demand for such a service, and much may depend on librarians to stimulate the enthusiasm of potential users.

The Art Section of the Library of the Centre for Historical Studies in Madrid inherited part of the art library of the former Centro de Estudios Históricos (CEH) and the entire collection of the Instituto de Historia del Arte y Arqueologia ‘Diego Velazquez’. The Art Section is particularly well endowed with monographs on painting from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and on silver, and with guides and catalogues relating to regional art. The collection of periodicals is one of the best of its kind in Madrid. Other notable holdings include the manuscripts of the Catálogos Monumentales Nacionales, a collection of auction catalogues, and a magnificent collection of photographs. The CEH Library has been part of a libraries automation programme, the Programa de Informatización de Bibliotecas del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (PRIBIC) since 1988, and in 1989 made a start on the retrospective conversion of the catalogue records of the Art Section. The Art Section collaborates with other art libraries in Madrid and contributes data to documentation centres such as ISOC and to the Répertoire d’Art et Archéologie (now succeeded by the Bibliography of the History of Art). Projects currently under consideration include indexing and automating the auction catalogues, and copying the photograph collection onto videodisc.

In the last decade, some 60 videodiscs have been produced on aspects of the French cultural heritage. These represent nearly one-third of the total of videodiscs recorded in a national survey published in 1988. All types of collection, and every historical period, are represented. Videodiscs have been employed for the sake of their administrative benefits and to conserve visual material, but also to exploit that material more effectively and to make it more accessible to the public. Thus some videodiscs are available to the public while others are not. The requirements for producing a videodisc vary with the purpose which it is to serve; although there are several different methods of transferring images to videodisc, the quality of the image depends above all on the quality of the original; similarly, there are various ways of linking images to the supporting documentation without which a videodisc is as good as useless. Initiatives to date have explored the potential of this new technology in an innovative spirit; in so doing they have demonstrated, but have scarcely begun to fulfil, the variety of needs which, in this visual age, videodiscs have the capacity to meet.

The first edition of Lois Swan Jones’s methodological and bibliographic guide appeared in 1978; it is now available, under an amended title, in an extensively revised third edition. This, in effect a new book, and though susceptible to (and worthy of) close criticism, enhances its standing as the best published guide to research in the visual arts.

Since the 19th century, a developing awareness of cultural patrimony has been accompanied by advances in conservation, by the growth of a body of literature on conservation, and by the establishment of bodies, including agencies at the international level, dedicated to conservation. But not everything can be preserved: choices have to be made of what most merits preservation. Art librarians are involved, both as conservers of the documentary heritage (which contributes to the ethos in which decisions are made) and, sometimes, as members of teams responsible for the preservation of artefacts and buildings. There is a need for specialists of all kinds who are involved in the preservation of the cultural patrimony to work closely together, to discuss priorities, and to ensure that nothing escapes attention.