National art libraries: monoliths or artels?

Abstract

The ideal of a single, national art library is no more practicable than that of a single national library. The alternative is to regard all of a nation’s art libraries as comprising the national art library, taking advantage of their diversity and of their provision of a range of access points and policies. This requires effective co-ordination, preferably combining maximum co-operation with a minimum of centralisation, and including the rotation of specific responsibilities among participating libraries. An example of such a confederation of art libraries is represented by the network of art libraries within the Research Libraries Group (RLG) in the USA. A new RLG plan for achieving efficient co-operative cataloguing of exhibition catalogues demonstrates how a confederation of libraries can work together to act as a national art library, more effectively than would be possible for a single ‘monolithic’ library.