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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The art auction trade flourished in Canada as the 19th century progressed, pitting local artists against importers of European art; yet today there are relatively few preserved catalogues to show for all this activity. The National Gallery of Canada Library has been documenting the survivors, creating records in the SCIPIO database and arranging for microfilming. Individual lots have also been indexed (some of the idiosyncracies of auction catalogue entries are described below) and a Library Occasional Paper is to be published with a bibliographical listing and historical essay on the art auction in 19th-century Canada.

For the past fifteen years the Getty Provenance Index has developed a series of projects that index auction catalogues, beginning with British catalogues of the 19th century and followed by French, Dutch, German and Belgian catalogues of the same period or earlier. This has led to the discovery of many previously unrecorded catalogues, most notably German and Belgian, providing a strong incentive to consider how Frits Lugt’s Répertoire des Catalogues de Ventes should eventually be revised, and even brought up to date. The Getty projects also include automating the individual items in the catalogues, which has led not only to much new data about the provenance of paintings held by museums in many parts of the world, but has also helped to identify the owners of collections found in previously anonymous sale catalogues.