Cooperative collection development and resource sharing among art libraries: past and present

Abstract

An appreciation of the diversity of art library users and their information I needs, and of the literature of art, is a necessary prerequisite to consideration I of the objectives of cooperative collection development and resource sharing I among art libraries. The idea of cooperation gathered momentum after World I War 1, after it had become clear that no art library could ever be I comprehensive, and was put into practice after the Second World War, at I local and national levels. Local cooperative schemes were implemented at I Vienna and in Ohio State (ARLO); the Farmington Plan was by contrast an I example of a national programme. In the Federal Republic of Germany the I libraries belonging to the AKB operate a cooperative acquisitions scheme and I receive extra funding to allow them to specialise in particular subject areas in I addition to their normal acquisitions. The Fine Arts Library of Harvard I University participates in the Research Libraries Group Art and Architecture I Program. The concept of assigning different subjects and collection I responsibilities to different libraries in order to achieve comprehensive I coverage makes a lot of sense especially if in academic institutions links can be I developed between the library’s specialisation and the institution’s academic programme.

Too much to look at, too much to read

“…To use Wolfgang Freitag's description, art history these days is a pluralist discipline. 5 It examines its topics from many different angles and it is increasingly interested in the contexts in which art is created, received, and institutionalised. Besides feeding on its neighbouring territories of history, archaeology, topography, ethnography and aesthetics, it strays more and more into sociology, economics, political science, psychology, linguistics, literature and the performing arts, and now and then even the sciences.…”