New resource: The Virtual Catalogue for Art History

From H-ArtHist:

(A really useful search engine for the art historians amongst us - a quick search brought up the details of several publications I hadn't come across before.)


The Virtual Catalogue for Art History (www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/kvk/vkkor www.artlibraries.net ) has today been enriched by two new target systems of utmost importance: the Library of the Getty ResearchInstitute, Los Angeles, and the National Art Library, Victoria andAlbert Museum. London.

Research Library at the Getty Research Institute: General collections include more than 900,000 volumes, incl. 140,000 auction catalogs on the history of art, architecture, and archaeology since prehistory and antiquity and extending to contemporary art in Europe, North America,Latin America, and selected regions of Asia. Special collections contain rare books, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and archival collections.The online catalogue currently contains ca. 650,000 bibliographical records for books, microforms, A/V materials etc., and about 15,000 serial/periodical titles (3,500 current).

National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: The collections main strengths focus on the main collecting areas of theMuseum and the Library's own specialist area in the history of the art,craft and design of the book. There are also strong collections in architecture. Major strengths are in sales catalogues, particularly18th and 19th century and in exhibition catalogues. The online catalogue now provides 750,000 records for all forms of material held, both the documentary collections of literature (about 1 million printed items) , and the material, both historic and contemporary, which now forms partof the V&A Word and Image department's curatorial collections.

Both the Getty Library and the NAL provide in-depth subject indexing for their holdings.With the inclusion of these two institutions, the Virtual Catalogue forArt Histories gives access to about 5,7 million records. A significant percentage of these records concerns articles from periodicals and collective writings as well special collections as photographic collections, manuscripts and archival collections.To better communicate the project’s international scope and purpose, a complete relaunch of the interface is in preparation for the beginningof 2007. On this occasion, the project will probably be rechristened as artlibraries.net. You may already use the pertinent URL: www.artlibraries.net

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