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Dear ARLIS-L:
I've received many excellent replies and so many "me, too" e-mails in response to my question about art museum archives that I have decided to provide a summary for the list. Many thanks to all who responded and who gave permission for their replies to be posted here!
The original question was:
"I am wondering how other art museums keep an archival record of the publications that use images of works in the museum's permanent collection. Is keeping a bibliography of these publications sufficient, or are some museums also keeping a photocopy of the work as reproduced in the publication? Or is this kind of archival recordkeeping even necessary? We add many of these publications to the library's collection, but as a librarian I am leery of adding items on non-art subjects (clarinet pedagogy, paperback romances) only because they use a museum artwork to illustrate a point or decorate a cover. "
_____
"Our Collections division feels that publication records for the objects are definitely important. Overall, publication citations (for both visual and textual references) are recorded on the object's accession card. Any actual photocopies or serial offprints or proofs, etc. are kept in a specially marked folder within the object's file. There appears to be no real discernible consistency over the decades regarding what was deemed file worthy, so you never know how much of the publication history found on the accession card will actually translate to a hard copy in the file.
As far as the Library goes, more often than not, there will be a copy of an item that contains a reference to an object in our collection. If there is not a copy, it is usually because the publisher failed to send us a complimentary copy and our previous head librarian was not terribly diligent about filling in those gaps. Or we may not have the item because of the reason you mentioned - the subject matter falls outside the scope of our Library's holdings. Also, purely textual references to our objects may or may not have come to our attention. In truth, very often they are simply stumbled across by someone in the Collections division doing research.
Currently, the photographic reference process works like this:
1. The Photographic Rights and Reproductions department handles the reproduction request, including negotiating a contract which provides the museum with 2 complimentary copies of any publication.
2. When (well, if) the complimentary copies arrive, they are routed to me first for cataloging, and I decide whether or not the item is within our Library's scope.
3. After I process the item, it gets routed to the office manager for Collections who records the citation on the accession card, and makes her decision about whether or not to make a photocopy and/or keep the second complimentary copy (if it's really small).
4. The item gets routed to any appropriate curators for review.
5. The item is routed back to the Library. If I catalogued it, it rejoins the collection. If I decided not to catalog it, I put in a pile of material that is sent to our statewide affiliates."
_____
"Like you, we don't add publications to our reference collection just because they include an image of an item from the curatorial collections. However, we do try to track reproductions, since it tells us how our collections are being used. We have several different ways of doing so:
We record publication information in our Photography and Rights database at the point when a publisher requests permission to include an image from our collections. This probably contains some false positives, for publications that never materialize, and incorrect citations, for publications whose titles change between the time they request permission and the time the publication is issued (unless we get a copy of the publication, which we always request but don't always receive, we have no way of knowing). This database is fairly new; before it existed, we tracked these requests in paper files.
The curators also include information about requests in the object files, but since we don't always get a copy of the publication, they don't always have a photocopy.
One of the curators of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts keeps a current bibliography, organized by manuscript number, of all publications that contain images of medieval manuscripts. This is available through our online catalog.
When cataloging secondary material into the online catalog, we include a note in the form: "Includes reproduction of ..." But this has not been done for every work in the reference collection."
_____
"The Registrar's office keeps an official record of each use of one of
our images in its computer files. I assume these are linked to their
records of each individual work of art in the Museum collection. A copy
of the actual publications containing those images are then sent on to
me in the Library. We do catalogue any 'gift' that comes to us from the
Registrar's office no matter what the genre. To lead our users to those
items, we make a photocopy of the cover of the publication, a photocopy
of the title page, a photocopy of the image(s) and then those are
clipped together and put into our vertical files under the name of the
artist/creator (of the work in the image). This way, users who are
curious about all the uses of that artist's work have a set of
references at their finger tips as they do their research. In other
words, we only have a manual system of tracking those publications from
the Library side of things."
_____
"We keep a bibliography of sorts - our Registrar
enters information about the publication into the catalogue record for
the object in TMS (The Museum System, our database). As the manager of
the library, I do NOT keep books simply because they contain an image
from our collection; there has to be more content than that. Otherwise,
our library would be even more overflowing than it already is!"
_____
"Yes, we have a lengthy and extensive file. It is now a module within
our Museum's Object database (TMS) but started out as an object-index
file here in the library way back when. We continue to add records.
Since the museum gets (or is supposed to get) a copy of each publication
where our work is published, we primarily use the books we get that way
to attach the bibliographic data to the object record. While we strive
for completeness, I know that there are publications out there that we
have missed along the way."
_____
"When I was in charge of a museum library I didn't keep anything that wasn't art related. I assumed that the office in charge of copyright/duplicating services kept records of publications and images used. One museum library I worked for kept a bibliography of permanent collection images used in art publications and that was useful to curators when they happened to be in the library."
_____
"Well, we add them to our collection, "for library use only". I agree it
seems odd to add the non-art related items, but we seem to be the
logical place to keep track of them all. They get cataloged; a card is
made up for a file of "books which have a reproduction of a work of art
from the collection" (we're not electronic yet...)"
_____
"Our Registrar at [the museum], who maintains the Master Files ("object files") on all our artwork, had this to say about her procedures relating to your question below:
"For exhibition catalogs in which [museum] artworks are illustrated, I photocopy the image, entry, and any relevant text, plus I record in the exhibitions history field in the database, the catalog number and page on which it is reproduced. For all other publications in which [museum] artworks are reproduced, I simply photocopy the image and entry and place it in the object file. Only a few of the object files contain bibliographic lists of all reproductions."
The database she refers to above is the museum's main database of artworks in our collection (not Library-related). The Registrar then sends the original exhibition catalogue or book to the Library, where I decide whether it's worth cataloging or not. I can tell you I pitch mathematics textbooks, books on music, etc. right away."
Sarah Quimby
Associate Librarian
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
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612-870-3182
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