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ONLINE AUCTION CATALOG DATABASE NOW INCLUDES COMPREHENSIVE RECORDS FROM
FRICK ART REFERENCE LIBRARY


The Frick Art Reference Library announces the completion of a two-year
project to enter records for its renowned collection of auction sale
catalogs into SCIPIO, the international database of the Research Libraries
Group.  SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sale Catalogs is the only online
collaborative catalog of auction sale catalogs in existence, providing
bibliographic access to valuable sources of information on the provenance of
works of art and the history of patronage, taste, and market trends.
Records contain dates and places of sale, catalog title, the auction house,
sellers, institutional holdings, and other information.   Other contributors
to SCIPIO are the Art Institute of Chicago=3B the Cleveland Art Museum=3B =
the
Getty Research Center, Los Angeles=3B the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York=3B the National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, =
London=3B
the National Gallery of Art, Washington=3B and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art, Kansas City.

Comments Patricia Barnett, Andrew W. Mellon Librarian of the Frick Art
Reference Library, =22Among the Library's unique resources that serve to
chronicle the history of collecting, taste and connoisseurship, the
collection of nearly 70,000 annotated auction sale catalogs justly stands as
one of the richest assemblages of primary sources for scholarly research in
this resurgent field of study.  To enhance access to these historic records
has been a most rewarding undertaking.=22

Generously funded by a grant from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable
Trust, the project encompassed the entry of over 63,000 records representing
auction catalogs dating from 1616 to 1996.  The Library has been a
contributor to SCIPIO for its current sale catalogs since 1996, entering new
items upon receipt.  Since its founding in 1920, the Library has purchased
and acquired European auction catalogs dating back to the 17th century. As a
result of this project, nearly 4,000 of the Library's catalogs have now been
identified as rare, or possibly unique, in North American or the world.
This figure nearly doubles the number originally cited in Lugt's =
R=E9pertoire
des catalogues de ventes publiques (1600-1925).  Quite a number of these
catalogs might have otherwise perished during the Second World War when many
European depositories of such rare documents were destroyed.

Begun in 1998, the retrospective conversion of the Frick Art Reference
Library's auction sale catalogs records was the initial project of a
five-year program to increase accessibility to the library's bibliographic
and photographic records by conversion to electronic formats.  The success
of this project owes much to Rodica Preda, Retrospective Conversion
Coordinator.  For more information, contact Deborah Kempe, Chief,
Collections Management =26 Access, Frick Art Reference Library, New York, NY
10021.  212 547-0658 (kempe=40frick.org =3Cmailto:kempe=40frick.org=3E )

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