Dear Colleagues,

 

There hasn’t been much discussion on our list serve about the end of the Bibliography of the History of Art.  There is a perception (reported from a number of sources, some quite influential) that art historians no longer use such research tools; in part, this may be why the Getty dropped BHA.

 

Is this a common perception of those on our list?  If you publish, are you indifferent to whether or not your publication can be found through such a search engine as BHA (now IBA)?  As an editor of a journal, I have heard from art historians that it is important to have our articles indexed by BHA.  But perhaps this is not a wide-spread desire?

 

Committees who review faculty for promotion and tenure often take note of the fact that a candidate’s work cannot be found on professional indexing services.  It strikes me that there can be real consequences for one’s career if our profession loses—or only retains a weak version of—bibliographic services.  I can imagine those in language departments being up in arms if they were to lose their research database, the MLA international bibliography of books and articles on the modern languages and literatures.

 

Should art historians be protesting?

 

Vernon

 

 

Vernon Hyde Minor

Editor, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

Research Professor, University of Illinois, School of Art and Design

Professor Emeritus of Art History, The University of Colorado at Boulder