Concentrating on slides, as the major classroom teaching material for the study of art history, this paper provides an outline of procedures for their acquisition, processing, storage, circulation and management. Following on from this the development of the profession of slide curator (qualifications, training and status), and the organisations which have been formed to serve the needs of this professional group and their achievements are described, and evaluated. This paper was first delivered to the Section of Art Libraries at the IFLA Council in Montreal, August 1982.

The year the Olympic Games were forced to halt international sportsmanship to include a horrifying entre’act of international bloodshed. A year of political schizophrenia in the United States, in which the largest popular vote ever was accorded to the man who was to be at the epicenter of the most profound national scandal in U.S. history. The sort of year which makes newspaper editors happy, and fills the rest of us with morbid fascination. It is not surprising, therefore, that the founding of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) is not the event that most people associate with the year 1972. And yet, the organisation grew and was shaped in the intervening decade by circumstances not only within the relatively narrow spectrum of professional art librarianship and visual curatorship, but within the larger contexts of sociological and technological circumstances, and within the art and library worlds of which it is a part.

This paper traces the development of the discipline of art history, particularly in relation to its attendant documentation (both textual and visual), and the bibliographical ‘machinery’ which has been developed to control it. Problems of control, organisation and retrieval are discussed, with particular emphasis on subject analysis. By drawing attention to the difficulties which have beset this field in the past, some pointers for those involved in current projects such as the Art and Architecture Thesaurus project, the videodisc, etc., where technology may prove to be a significant tool, are identified.

Some key developments over the last ten years in the cataloging of art library materials are surveyed. They are grouped into short essays, wherein the author looks for their broader implications. Details are omitted, but extensive footnotes will aid the reader who wants to track them down. The citations emphasise particularly ARLIS/NA’s role in the decade’s activities.

As the range and sophistication of visual resources, and the size of collections available to the art historian and student have increased over the last century, so has the need for an appropriately qualified body of professionals to organise and develop them. This paper explains how and why those involved with visual resources have tended to have a background and training other than in librarianship, and how as a consequence, the two branches of the profession of art librarianship (textual and visual) have grown apart, with visual resources professionals allying themselves to art historical organisations. The author makes a case for the merging of the two professions, united in serving the same subject oriented clientele. This paper was first delivered to the Section of Art Libraries at the IFLA Council, in Montreal, August 1982.

Following a conference ‘Bibliographie d’histoire de l’art’, in Paris in 1969, considerable developments have occurred in the control of art-historical documentation. This paper surveys the not insignificant role which computers have played in this development, tracing the appearance of bibliographical art databases (serial bibliographies and abstracting and indexing services, library catalogues and networks, and individual computer-aided projects), and developments in the management and analysis of ‘museum’ objects and images. The greatest importance is attached to co-operation between the various activities outlined, and matters such as standardisation (of content and form) and compatibility of systems are discussed in depth. In conclusion, a series of goals are proposed.

The architectural history of factories is not yet a popular field of research. Nor, in design history terms, is there investigation into how efficiently their design is related to functions or how it affects the well-being of the occupants. Such investigations must cross the boundaries of, and interrelate the fields of architectural, social, political and economic research. An integrated methodology has yet to be achieved. This article describes how a section of the Dunlop Archive Project is finding its way in this field.

The documentation problems faced by museums, and the organisations established to assist in tackling them are described along with an assessment of present progress at individual museum, and national and international co-ordination levels. The role which computers may play in this field is examined. However, systems analysis is the first priority, and automation is only one solution, and not appropriate in all cases.

At first, microforms and the Fine Arts did not appear to be very compatible. Today with improvements of microform readers and technology together with the proliferation of types of materials which are published in microform, their acceptance is assured. Journals, series of out-of-print books, exhibition catalogues, photographs and other archival collections are now appearing in ever increasing numbers and are being accepted by those interested in both the acquisitions and research in Fine Arts. Librarians must constantly demand acceptable quality, complete bibliographic control and also begin to plan for regional and international co-operation so that those libraries unable to purchase the expensive sets may share in the increasing wealth of information and not be left without some form of access.

A reproduction gives a very imperfect account of a work of art. The distortions of a photograph, while less obvious than those of an engraving, are still serious. According to some authorities the dangers of using reproductive photographs include the spoiling of the aesthetic eye and the too easy assumption that a copy can stand in for the original. While reproductions are indispensable they need to be employed critically: for example a good black-and-white photograph may sometimes be preferable to the meretricious colour slide.

During the past ten years the field of visual resources curatorship has become increasingly professional. Hand in hand with this advancement has come a push to introduce standards for organising and accessing visual materials. Computerisation has occurred in individual image collections, yet the wider use of automated systems within visual resources collections awaits the establishment of such standards. These concerns for professionalism, standardisation, automation and the adoption of new photographic media have been prime factors in the development of visual resources curatorship since 1972.

This paper outlines some of the practical problems facing those involved with image collections, and the financial implications of the retrieval complexities allied to the scale of such collections, when computer-aided systems are considered. Projects carried out since the early 1970s are described, and existing classification systems such as ‘Iconclass’ are assessed, with emphasis on the need for compatibility. A realistic approach to making basic information readily accessible in a relatively cheap system which may later be expanded given the non-economically viable nature of this field, is recommended.

There is a wide range of publications available from the British Government which may be of interest to art librarians, and this article provides an outline, and a guide to the many sources for tracing and obtaining them. It goes on to indicate recent changes in the patterns of official publishing, and likely future developments in the eighties.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and the Science Museum Pictorial Collection have both recently produced draft codes of rules for the cataloguing of visual materials based on AACR2. This paper provides an assessment and comparison of the two draft codes and concludes both that these codes show that AACR2 does provide a valuable base for building more detailed specialised rules upon, and that the codes provide valuable thinking which should be in-put into AACR3.