Dear ARLIS/NA Community,
Below is a report from the Advisory Committee to the members of
artlibraries.net on recent developments of a new prototype for locating bibliographical information in art libraries. Discussion about the future of artlibraries.net took place at the annual conference
of ARLIS/NA in Pasadena.
Regards,
Debbie Kempe
Past President, ARLIS/NA and member of the Advisory Committee of artlibraries.net
From: Hoyer, Ruediger [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 8:52 AM
Subject: Preliminary information on WorldCat art libraries group catalog project
Dear colleagues,
Since the artlibraries.net general meeting in Paris (September 27-29, 2012), the artlibraries.net committee has continued to analyse the proposals which were made by OCLC and discussed by the audience
in Paris. Materials from the Paris conference are available online in the ‘Archive/Documents’ area of
www.artlibraries.net (http://artlibraries.net/archiv_dokumente/archiv_dokumente_en.php).
In addition to the state of discussion attained in September 2012, we now have a completely new prototype of a discipline-specific view of WorldCat, based on the group catalog model already used for example by AdamNet in Amsterdam (www.adamnet.nl).
This prototype has been realized by the OCLC office in Leiden. The artlibraries.net committee had the opportunity to discuss it recently in Amsterdam with OCLC (Eric van Lubeek, Managing Director OCLC EMEA; Janifer Gatenby, EMEA Program Manager Metadata; Frank
van Klaveren). On this occasion, we agreed on the working title ‘WorldCat Art Discovery’. We also agreed that this should be organized as
a new, separate project, in addition to artlibraries.net, and not as a short-term replacement for artlibraries.net which is a unique platform for outstanding art libraries worldwide, developed thanks to the KIT Karlsruhe: artlibraries.net is so far irreplaceable
given the fact that the majority of the partner institutions is not yet participating in WorldCat.
The new prototype is online at:
www.artlibraries.worldcat.org, where it will be accessible for the next months. As the normal WorldCat, the interface is available in eleven languages. You may have to enter a postal code (e.g.: D-80333) in order to see locations information. The prototype
is also connected to the WorldCat Articles database of 200 million records, allowing to identify pertinent articles based on the holdings information even if the individual library has no article record in its catalogue. As for the list of libraries currently
taken into account, it should correspond largely to those institutions already included in the experimental ‘Art libraries in WorldCat’ target created by Uwe Dierolf (KIT Karlsruhe) with the help of Bruce Washburn (OCLC Research)within artlibraries.net (http://artlibraries.net/allg_infos_en/KUNST_ALN_WORLDCAT.php?searchmask=1).
Recently, the ARLIS/NA conference in Pasadena (April 25-29, 2013,
http://www.arlisna.org/pasadena2013/) was a welcome opportunity to talk about this project with distinguished colleagues. Thanks to the initiative of aln committee member Deborah Kempe (Frick Art Reference
Library, New York) as president of ARLIS/NA and thanks to generous travel awards from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (see
http://www.arlisna.org/news/news_index.html) as well as the support from the Getty Research Institute, it was possible to have a good European presence there and to organize several events where colleagues
participating in the Future of Art Bibliography (FAB) initiative (see
http://www.getty.edu/research/scholars/research_projects/fab/) and in the artlibraries.net committee could convene and discuss the possible future developments with other colleagues attending the ARLIS/NA conference:
On Thursday April 25, Rüdiger Hoyer (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich) has presented the prototype during a preliminary FAB meeting at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, in the presence of Max Marmor, president of the
Kress Foundation.
On Saturday April 27, Jan Simane (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence) presented the history of artlibraries.net as well as the new project in his paper given at the public FAB session moderated by Carole Ann Fabian (Avery Architectural
& Fine Arts Library, Columbia University) and Kathleen Salomon (Getty Research Institute), see
http://arlisna2013.sched.org/event/4759172f59a51f4d4c8cecf9033a7b14.
Jan Simane’s paper is now available on www.artlibraries.net in the ‘Archive/Documents’ area (http://artlibraries.net/archiv_dokumente/archiv_dokumente_en.php).
Also on Saturday April 27, Dennis Massie (OCLC Research) and Kathleen Salomon (Getty Research Institute) presented the new project at a OCLC Research libraries roundtable/lunch, see
http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2013/04-27.html. The PP slides were created by Dennis Massie and edited by Janifer Gatenby (EMEA Program Manager Metadata, OCLC, Leiden).
In general, we may say that the conclusions drawn at our recent committee meeting in Amsterdam were confirmed by the ARLIS/NA conference. The project is also sustained by the FAB initiative. The fact that the current prototype is being
developed in Europe contributes to a sound balance between Europe and America within the project.
Detailed information concerning the prototype and its possible developments as well as up-to-date information on the financial and organizational proposals made by OCLC is being prepared and will be communicated very soon, probably before
the end of June. It will in a first a step be sent to all the artlibraries.net partners as well as to the additional libraries which are already participating in WorldCat. The aim is to have sufficient feedback before the summer break allowing to continue
the project on a consolidated basis.
For the artlibraries.net committee (http://artlibraries.net/allg_infos_en.php#Committee)
With kind regards
Dr. Rüdiger Hoyer
Bibliotheksdirektor
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
Katharina-von-Bora-Str. 10
D-80333 München
+49 (0)89 28927577
Fax +49 (0)89 28927608
Mobile: +49 (0)160 5530377
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