The recent British Library sponsored user study of RILA is described which demonstrates the usefulness of RILA both as an acquisition and as an inter-lending tool and which also shows that professional art librarianship has yet to reach some of the smaller art schools where it is most needed. The next major project of the RILA UK office is outlined, namely the possible reactivating of the Bibliography of the History of British Art (BHBA) into the Bibliography of British Art (BBA) using on-line access to the entire data base of RILA.

The concept of artistic knowledge is considered, that which is unique to the artist and that which can be acquired by other means, particularly from the storehouse of a library’s collections. The problem of art being at a remove in a library can be countered by collections of ‘real’ art e.g. artists’ books, and by outgoing, generous art librarianship. The art library can also make its own contribution to the maintenance of traditional artistic knowledge by concentrating at least a part of its collections on whatever is unique in its own area, thus counterbalancing the tendency to uniform, ‘monochrome’ coverage.

Because this review will be partial in its survey and somewhat critical in tone, it may be as well to begin by applauding the overall achievement of AACR. Its long-awaited publication in 1967 helped enormously to clear the cataloguing air. Here at last was a convincing demonstration that behind all the craft mysteries of cataloguing there lay a logic, a rationale; that it was not just a matter of following a few rule of thumb procedures. For dealing with the general run of modern printed texts in English-speaking libraries the new code promised well.