The Library’s holdings in this discipline cover the history of art and architecture from ancient Greece to the present, including publications in English, all major European languages, and vernacular Chinese and Japanese. As of 1999, the library subscribed to 219 serials in this discipline. In addition, the Art Slide Library’s holdings consist of 280,000 slides, 38,600 photographs and reproductions, and 10,000 microfiche, as well as a reference book collection of some 600 volumes, all located conveniently in the List Art Center with the department.
Since the institution of the graduate program in the late 1960's, retrospective buying has taken place to support the Ph.D. program. The Department of the History of Art & Architecture still benefits from an annual allocation of $15,750 endowment from an NEH grant, dedicated to this purpose. An endowment from the family of Frances Y. Burnett ($1,788 for the current year) funds the acquisition of at least one antiquarian purchase annually for the Hay Library. The approval plan with Yankee Book Peddler supplies current titles published domestically and, to a limited degree, abroad. The approval plan with Wasmuth for foreign titles was discontinued in 1995-96 in favor of firm orders. As a result, the library purchases titles specifically requested by faculty rather than a vendor’s selection. An approval plan with Worldwide Books acquires major English-language exhibition catalogs, mostly modern and contemporary in subject matter.
Access to electronic resources has improved dramatically since the last review in 1994. Available on the Library Web are Art Abstracts, ARTbibliographies Modern, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Bibliography of the History of Art, Getty Provenance Index, Grove Dictionary of Art Online, Humanities Abstracts, ICONCLASS, and Index of Christian Art. The electronic back-file of Art Index (1929-1984) will be acquired during the current year.
Few serials in this discipline are available electronically, due to both technical and rights issues with the inclusion of images. The Library currently has electronic subscriptions to Art History and Speculum, as well as to a number of electronic journals in related disciplines.
Elsewhere, substantial development of digital image resources to support both study and teaching of Art History has occurred. Brown lags behind in this endeavor. The University’s policy on copyright law compliance has, until very recently, presented an obstacle to digitizing most of the Art Slide Library’s holdings. In addition to supporting the scanning of existing resources, the Library will need to license images from vendors. Some 50,000 images from museums, for instance, are available by subscription from the Research Libraries Group as the AMICO Library. Software for display of these images in the classroom and as online review sets must be acquired and supported. It will be critical, in the near future, for graduate students to have the experience of teaching with digital image resources, as is already happening at peer institutions.
Major acquisitions by the Library since 1994 have included the print version of the Grove Dictionary of Art (34 volumes) and a set of 3,500 slides to support the teaching of Islamic art and architecture.
The table below indicates the financial support the Library has provided for Art History, in the general collections alone, since the last review.
| Library Expenditures | 1994/95 | 1995/96 | 1996/97 | 1997/98 | 1998/99 | 1999/2000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firm Orders | $ 35,837 | $ 80,639 | $ 73,132 | $ 54,406 | $ 75,354 | $ 60,905 |
| Approvals | $ 70,000 | $ 26,415 | $ 30,386 | $ 27,813 | $ 30,840 | $ 32,851 |
| Serials | $ 13,876 | $ 14,268 | $ 12,918 | $ 15,716 | $ 13,993 | $ 15,432 |
| TOTAL EXPENDITURES | $ 119,713 | $ 121,322 | $ 116,436 | $ 97,935 | $ 120,187 | $ 109,188 |
An additional $8,500 has been budgeted annually for acquisitions for the Art Slide Library’s collections, and expended primarily for slides. Slide production in-house is carried out on a weekly schedule to accommodate faculty and student needs for lectures and reports. Use of slides is greater than ever, with circulation last year exceeding 40,000 items. The Art Slide Library’s database catalog has been migrated to FileMaker Pro and is searchable from a web interface (Anita).
According to the Collection Development Policy Statement prepared for Art in 1983, the desired level of coverage in most aspects of the discipline is RESEARCH. A RESEARCH-level collection is one that includes the major source materials required for dissertation and independent research, including materials containing research reporting, new findings, scientific experimental results, and other information useful to researchers. It also included all important reference works and a wide selection of specialized monographs, and an extensive collection of journals and major indexing/abstract services. The Collection Development Policy Statement will be reviewed and updated during 2000.
Strengths of the collection are Greek and Roman art and architecture, French Medieval art and architecture, Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, American and European architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, European art of the 19th and 20th centuries, and American art since 1945.
Areas in which current collecting is greater than in the past, but in which holdings are still in need of increase to reach Research level, include Medieval archaeology, Spanish and Latin American art and architecture, Islamic art and architecture, and Chinese art and archaeology. Since much of current art historical scholarship is interdisciplinary, collection development for related disciplines (History, History of Science, Classics, English and European Literature, Religious Studies, Old World Archaeology & Art, and Visual Art) is relied upon for support of both teaching and research.
Norine Duncan
Collection Development Librarian for Art
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