This paper describes the collections and services, as well as the current and future goals, of the Manuel Solari Swayne Library, an information service specializing in the visual arts in Lima, Peru. The library is part of the Museo de Arte de Lima, an institution that holds more than 10,000 objects, providing a survey of Peruvian art from pre-Columbian times to the present day. The museum’s current renovation project includes plans to double the space available to the library and thus create better access to this valuable resource for art history, museology and the visual arts in Peru and Latin America.

Florence in Italy, a renowned centre for art and culture, has been called a ‘living museum’ of the Italian Renaissance. Today it is also the site of a co-operative international project bringing the world’s scholarly community access to the bibliographic patrimonies of a group of special art and humanities libraries. The IRIS consortium is a unique resource for art historians, but it is also of value and use for anyone interested in the many aspects of this rich artistic period.

At the Tiré à part conference held in Quebec city in October 2003, speakers from artist-run centres from across Canada discussed 30 years of experience in publishing. Themes such as audience, production, funding, professionalisation and distribution encouraged the identification and exploration of current issues. These are put in context here by a general overview of the development of the genre as well as a short history of production by artist-run centres such as Art Metropole, Artspeak, Artexte and the Bookmobile project.

The Oxford University Library Services, with its millions of volumes and extensive electronic resources covering all subject areas, is going through a lengthy process of consolidation and rationalisation at every level. Increasing pressures on space and budgets have forced the issue. Art history is a small component. However libraries and collections covering the visual arts have been at the forefront of this process by virtue of the establishment of the new Sackler Library. The system continues to evolve on all fronts, including collection development, integration of existing libraries into fewer sites, new offsite storage facilities and increasing reliance on electronic resources.

The V&A Illustration Awards have been running since 1972, with many famous illustrators receiving the prestigious and highly coveted prizes. In 2004, the Awards were strongly contested, and their success points the way forward for this important branch of art. A display of the award-winning entries for 2005 will be on show at the V&A from 7 December 2005 until 30 April 2006. The Awards are being expanded to widen the entry categories and to reflect new trends in illustration at the beginning of this 21st century.

Art information providers in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, include libraries, archives, and documentation sections in art museums and cultural centers. In 1998 REDARTE-SP, a network of these services in the city, was created to facilitate discussion of theoretical, technical and organizational issues facing art information services and to formulate collaborative projects. The subsequent exchange of ideas, discussion of successful practices and development of shared projects empowers art information professionals, contributes to improving the quality of art information services and products, provides better use of the available resources and widens the circle of users.

Mexican art, dating back to 2500 BC, is enormously rich and stylistically varied, the product of the country’s indigenous, ‘mestizo’ [mixed race] and Mexican cultures, which range from Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Mixtec, to Mayan and Aztec. During the colonial period, the influence of European art was added, brought via Spain, and at the same time Catholicism prevailed over pre-Hispanic polytheism. Mexican culture as it is known today emerged at the end of the Spanish colonial period and its wealth is amply demonstrated in the content of the writings and other documents found in Mexican libraries today.

The creation of co-operative networks for sharing information has been one of the most significant advances of recent decades in Cuba; they have been set up in various areas of knowledge in order to solve the problems caused by the increasing accumulation of data, images, ideas, information and objects. The difficulties faced daily by libraries and their users in accessing this information have led to groups of libraries working together and sharing information, goals and users. But visual arts librarians have not yet formalised a network of this sort, although preliminary analysis has shown the benefits of such co-operation.

This article traces the history of the Latin American holdings of the Museum of Modern Art Library, one of the first institutions outside Latin America to start documenting the art of this geopolitical region, and one of the best research centers on modern Latin American art in the world. This success story dates back to the thirties, when the Museum Library began building a Latin American and Caribbean collection that currently comprises over 15,000 volumes of catalogues and art books. The launch of various research tools and facilities for scholars and the general public in recent years also shows the Museum’s strong commitment not only towards Latin American art history but also to the present and the future of the Latino art community.