Printed images provide vivid evidence concerning many facets of British history in the 16th and 17th centuries. Yet their exploitation has hitherto been inhibited partly by difficulties of access and partly by the lack of adequate means of searching for them by subject. In both respects, electronic technology is making major strides forward, as this article indicates with particular reference to a project aimed to make such material widely available in searchable, online form.

The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Word and Image Department holds an estimated 750,000 prints, drawings, paintings and photographs. Recent acquisitions have been catalogued using the Museum’s Collections Information System, but the vast majority of earlier acquisitions are still only described in a wide range of card indexes and printed catalogues. The indexes have been scanned, but the Museum now needs to complete the transfer of the catalogue records to its online system. The ‘Factory’ digitisation project was established in November 2007, with the intention of digitising the Department’s entire holdings and making them available online. Some 15,000 objects have been photographed in the first year, and cataloguing is also under way. The digital images and catalogue descriptions will be made available online via the Museum’s website as the project proceeds.

How do you turn library, archive and museum collaboration from a good idea into reality? And what are the benefits of collaborative action to begin with? This article introduces the increasing rewards and risks of interdependent working relationships along the collaboration continuum, and highlights the institutional and environmental catalysts which foster collaborative action. Use these insights to assess where your institution is on the path to deeper collaboration, and which obstacles you may still need to address!

This study evaluates the content coverage of Google Scholar, as it compares to three bibliographic databases – Arts & humanities citation index, Bibliography of the history of art and Art full text/Art index retrospective – on the subject of art history. The comparison reveals that it indexes roughly one-third of the 470 tested articles, dwarfed by the Arts & humanities citation index’s 73% coverage. Additionally, 64% of the 157 articles retrieved in Google Scholar are ‘citation-only’ records that contain incomplete bibliographic data and lack direct links to the abstracts or full text of the articles.

When we define society today as a ‘global society’ we are saying that we are, or at least we strive to be, an interconnected society, even more than if we were to say society is ‘worldwide’. In a global society, borders are crossed, and the phrase implies interaction, participation and inclusiveness. Artists and designers, as both a product of a global society and in response to the resulting all-inclusiveness, or ‘globality’, of their respective fields, are prompted to cross two kinds of border: physical and methodological. This paper focuses on the crossing of methodological boundaries and, in addition, recognizes the highly individualized nature of art and design research. This serves as a launch pad to explore the question of how librarians can shape their practice in order to respond better to the needs of contemporary artists and designers.

Inspired by their new university president’s call for global outreach and a desire for community partnerships, several libraries at the Ohio State University worked with the Columbus Museum of Art on a proposal for exhibitions and public programming. Called ‘Artist as Activist’ this exhibition and educational program proposed a dynamic collaboration between the institutions, with the goal of broadening the audience for the museum’s and the libraries’ collections and developing an inclusive educational and dissemination model.

This paper highlights the increasing numbers of students with disabilities in higher education. Results from international online surveys of such students, and the professionals who work with them, show that the provision of alternative format and enhanced materials is less than ideal. In particular the provision of tactile versions of images and graphics is very poor. Methods for producing such materials for blind and low-vision students are discussed.