Museums are facing increased difficulties in supplying lecturers with slides of items in their collection. This is particularly so where they have no photographic studio on the premises and have to call in outside commercial photographers.

The cost of making a good quality lecture slide in terms of the lighting set-up, travelling, and man-hours, is almost as great as that involved in making a transparency for a publisher. One photographer working for a UK provincial gallery was charging £26 for a colour slide in 1975! This is, of course, quite exceptional, but such a service can never be cheap in future.

The post of Academic Librarian for Art and Design was established at Leicester Polytechnic in 1973, as part of a team of tutor librarians having no library duties other than reader instruction. Several kinds and degrees of instruction have been attempted, ranging from formal lectures to the ‘point-of-need’ method, and most have been found to have both advantages and disadvantages. Interest can be aroused by drawing attention to the variety of materials, access to which is gained through familiarity with bibliographic tools. The tutor librarian’s role implies involvement in the presentation of the library by means of guiding and publications; but when the tutor librarian’s is a separate post, additional to those professional library staff who are responsible for running the library, difficulties and conflict may be unavoidable.

In 1970 the Faculty of Art and Design Library at Bristol Polytechnic accepted responsibility for a slide collection, the reorganisation of which was guided by information received from other art libraries, and was further refined following the removal of the collection into the library in 1974. Slides are filed alphabetically by country, artist, and other criteria, within the categories of Fine Art, Architecture, and Design, and a notation has been derived from this arrangement. A fourth section of the collection houses sets of slides.

The Slide Library of the Design Council offers a reference and a loan service to institutions and individuals; copies of some slides are available for purchase. Slides are acquired from external sources or are specially made by the Design Council; they illustrate the history of design as well as contemporary design. The slides are classified by subject, and are listed in a published catalogue. The Slide Library also houses an archive which can be consulted by researchers.