Art History, Scholarship and Image Libraries: Realising the Potential of the Digital Age. [1997]

Jennifer Durran

AbstractThe technology to digitise images of art works and to make those images available on a computer network is fast becoming a reality. It has been suggested that the technical requirements associated with these developments will be far easier to define and resolve than the institutional barriers that the discipline of art history must overcome if it is to realise the potential of the digital age. Consideration is given to elements within the art historical scholarly communication system that are in a state of transition and the way that current changes may foreshadow the widespread adoption of digital images as an information resource. The author concludes that the changes will be one of evolution rather than revolution.

1. Introduction‘Computing, scholarship and society [are] weaving an intricate dance, eachresponding to and generating a complex web of new and old forces, institutions, rules and standards, ideas. Reviewing the settings in which these transformations occur is a requisite first step towards assessing their impact on scholarship in the arts and humanities’

- John Garrett, New social and economic mechanisms to encourage access, 1995

That the late twentieth century is witnessing enormous shifts in the provision and access of information has become a truism. These changes have profound implications for all fields of knowledge and scholarly pursuit, including those previously unaffected on a large scale by computerised developments in information transfer - namely the arts and humanities. From within these disciplines, there has been growing concern that their specific needs will not be met by the emerging ‘information superhighway.’ Expert groups in the United States, for instance, joined forces to ‘address the urgent need for the humanities and arts to gain a voice in the planning and development of the National Information Infrastructure’ (the Clinton Administration’s plan for a national telecommunications system) and to assert the significant contributions that these fields can make ‘not only to the content of the NII but also to advances in technology that will drive its development.’ (Humanities and arts on the information highways, 1994: 1, 7)

This paper focuses on one of those arts and humanities disciplines, art history, and the potential that a networked digital information environment has for serving the needs of scholarship and teaching into the next century. That the technical infrastructure of the Internet may not adequately support the art historical scholarly communication process is only one of the many fundamental issues that need to be addressed but one which seems relatively easy to resolve in comparison to the ‘institutional’ obstacles within art historical scholarship and teaching. Many of these are subtle, diffused and difficult to define clearly but require investigation if we are to understand the context in which digital imaging is being implemented and what will hamper or foster its integration into those established practices of individuals and organisations accepted as fundamental to the discipline. The underlying assumption of this paper is that which is reflected overwhelmingly in the literature of visual resources librarianship - that a digital networked information environment will result in the advancement of art history practices and that its implementation is inevitable. It is undeniable that the technologies that permit the digital high-resolution capture and storage of

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photographic images of art and allow access to those images via a global network have enormous potential to solve many of the problems and difficulties in the study and teaching of art history. But the digital networked information scenario opens up a whole range of new and complex issues and exacerbates some existing problems for image libraries. The technologies of image capture, manipulation, storage and transfer continue to move ahead at an astounding rate, far outpacing the ability of libraries and scholars to incorporate them into their activities in any real meaningful way. The further penetration of digital technology into the domain of art historical scholarship is inevitable but the field is unlikely to ever match the responsiveness of the business and consumer markets to new trends. The process of realising the full potential of a digital networked environment is more likely to be that of evolution rather than revolution, with digital images supplementing existing resources rather than replacing them on a large scale. Present developments suggest pockets of change will precede more widespread shifts in the future. Many of these changes will be experimental and their success or failure will help determine the direction ahead.

2. The Art History Scholarly Communication SystemThroughout the art historical scholarly communication system and its interlocking, interdependent parts, two particular characteristics can be identified: a marked dependency on photographic reproductions, and a slow uptake of technology. Both have historical precedents which can be traced back to art history’s beginnings in the nineteenth century and both will continue to influence the pace and nature of change.

As a broad generalisation, one could say that the primary object of an art historian’s enquiry is the art object or cultural monument and its context; (Brilliant, 1988:120) the main information sources being photographic reproductions and photographically illustrated texts. Teaching is conducted with the aid of copious 35mm slides to illustrate lectures and seminars. Communication of research is via the publication of illustrated books and journal articles and, to a lesser extent, conference presentations again illustrated with slides. This process has varied little since the late nineteenth century when art history emerged as a separate discipline in the university system. During that period, the literature and the practices of art historical research and teaching were also being forged into the form we know today as a result of a convergence of developments in transmissive and reflective photography, the refinement of processes for printing photographically illustrated art books and magazines, the technology to project photographic images, the accessibility of art with the founding of public art museums and the growing popularity of art exhibitions, and last, but not least, the establishing of great public art libraries and image collections.

The image library or collection plays an integral role in the scholarly communication system. Collections of art images developed to serve different functions in the system: archival collections (primary materials where conservation for posterity is the overriding factor), commercial collections (primarily as a source of revenue), teaching collections (mostly secondary materials), private research collections (reflecting an individual’s or a group’s speciality) (Coulson, 1988 :9) and museum collections (usually primary materials that document a collection for management and publication purposes). Whilst many collections combine a number of these functions, they are generally different in content and level of accessibility. The most important criteria for defining the usefulness of these collections is volume and accessibility for ‘without such images in abundance, the act of comparison – the methodological basis of the discipline of art history - cannot come into full play and the facility fails to serve its users.’ (Brilliant, 1988:123)

Photography has defined and sustained virtually unchanged the practices of art history teaching and research for almost one hundred years. It has dictated the types of enquiry

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possible, contributed to the rise of the illustrated scholarly monograph as the quintessential end product of scholarly research and secured the role of the image collection as the primary resource for teaching. The enormous infrastructure built upon the photograph represents huge commitments in terms of finances and time. The working practices of art historians are based very much on the photographic ‘way of seeing’. As Donald Preziosi (1989: 72) has declared, ‘the modern discipline of art history presupposes the existence of photography. Indeed, art history as we know it today is the child of photography.’

In the nineteenth century the use of photography by art historians was controversial and limited initially to a few avid supporters. Despite its obvious benefits as a scholarly tool it was not universally accepted in art history as it was in other fields. The most acceptable use of photography appears to have been for teaching. Unfortunately, there appears to be little or no documentation about the transformation of scholars’ attitudes to photography throughout the course of this century. There is a critical dearth of information about twentieth century art historians’ actual uses of photographic or even more recent technology and conclusions are often drawn from anecdotal evidence in autobiographical descriptions. (Hamber, 1990: 135-6) What follows are some generalisations based on those limited sources. They may or may not be representative of art historians’ attitudes but give some indication of a deep-seated ambivalence towards technology of any description.

The late 1970s saw the introduction of computers for collection management in image libraries and museums. Despite the development of specialised art historical bibliographic databases, art historians in the early 1980s indicated an ‘almost unanimous unwillingness to invest time in learning about computers.’ (Stam, 1984: 118) The 1980s also saw the implementation of the videodisc resulting in a certain degree of automated access to images. Many librarians saw great promise in these new technologies, yet there were grave reservations from scholars. In retrospect the videodisc, like microform before it, failed to deliver even though both formats conformed to the criteria of volume and accessibility deemed essential for photographic image collections. The reasons for their failure are complex and require more careful analysis than has been given in the literature to date.

By the mid-1990s many image libraries had substantially computerised their collections, yet they failed to attract the academic user en masse. The introduction of digital imaging technology in the late 1990s has primarily been instigated by librarians. Digital images are being included in online catalogues and mounted on the Internet and on campus networks for student study purposes. There has also been some activity by art historians in developing teaching materials incorporating digital images. Most art historians would now have a personal computer and a network connection in their office. There is a general level of acceptance of word processing and library online public access catalogue (OPAC) searching but the extent to which they are using computers for research is relatively unknown. The emphasis until now has been on the production of digital image resources and interest is now shifting towards how those resources are used, particularly in scholarship. To date, there have been few unequivocal examples of scholarly research that could not have been undertaken without access to this type of resource.

The last few decades have seen art history struggling to redefine itself as an academic discipline. In the past there has been, more-or less, a set of great (male) artists, fine art ‘masterpieces’ and certain periods which were considered legitimate fields of study. The boundaries of art history have been extended – to encompass the study of women artists, ethnic and black artists, images from popular culture and advertising as well as non-western cultures - so that it has become in effect the study of visual culture, ‘the social and cultural construction of visual experience in everyday life, media, representation and the visual arts .’(Mitchell, 1995: 540) The use of methodologies derived from literary criticism which are highly theoretical and depend on few or no images has grown such that ‘linguistics, semiotics,

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rhetoric and various modes of ‘textuality’ have become the lingua franca for critical reflection on the arts, the media and other cultural forms.’ (Mitchell, 1994:11) It is ironic that this turning away from the use of images has occurred at a time when interest from scholars in other disciplines such as history, the performing arts, anthropology and sociology, women’s studies, psychology, etc is on the rise as part of ‘a complexly related transformation [in which]...the picture now...emerg[es] as a central topic of discussion in the human sciences in the way that language once did.’ (Mitchell, 1994:13)

The study of fine art objects implies a close relationship between art historians and art museums. The museum has had a strong influence on the type of scholarship that has traditionally been pursued, at least in the field of American art, where the museum rather than the university was the primary sponsor of scholarly investigation up until the 1960s. (Corn, 1988:193) This relationship between the art historian and the art museum seems likely to change if art historians are now interested in all kinds of visual culture not just the ‘aesthetically superior’ museum object. Art museums themselves are rethinking their role. The act of collecting, and the ownership and interpretation of collections has become increasingly problematic and controversial , particularly ‘the vast resources expended to [purchase], conserve, exhibit, reproduce, study and interpret a porous set of privileged objects’ (Corn, 1988:193) when, according to Barbara Stafford (1994: 1) ‘objects have fallen into disrepute as a major source of knowledge.’

The use of appropriation as an art style and the questioning of notions of originality, authenticity and presence have served to undermine the sanctity of the fine art object. At the same time museums are looking at new technologies to improve access to their collections. Interactive multimedia is being used to assist visitors to learn more about the exhibits within the museum and CD-ROMs and World Wide Web sites are available for those who want to visit the ‘virtual museum’

According to John Sinclair (1994), there is increasing evidence that ‘technologically advanced societies may be on the threshold of some fundamental transformations in the roles of communication, culture and economics.’ Certainly many elements of the scholarly communication system are coming under the influence of economic factors. Funding to universities is increasingly less generous and enterprising scholars have begun to look to the corporate sector for sponsorship. Scholarship has long been in the service of the commercial art market however the extent to which economic considerations are influencing “non-commercial scholarship” has become a concern for many. Museums continue to seek corporate and private sponsorship for mounting blockbuster exhibitions, refurbishing or building new facilities and particularly for special projects such as digitisation or multimedia. Indeed as Theodore Roszak (1986: 189) has remarked, ‘digitising something is becoming one of those utterly safe, undeniably worthy projects that foundations love to finance.’ Recently, scholars, museums and libraries have found a new source of funding opened to them as a result of the worldwide “multimedia phenomenon”. The Australian Federal Government, for example, in 1994 committed $84 million to the development of a multimedia industry in which the arts is expected to play a major role. The idea that the cultural sector may become one of the most significant sectors in the economy, a veritable ‘fin-de-siècle engine of economic growth,’ (Court, 1995: 3) is shared by many governments and international blocs such as the European Community and the G-7 group of nations which have initiated projects to develop markets for multimedia cultural information.

Publication constitutes an essential link in the academic infrastructure and the illustrated monograph remains the quintessential end product of art historical scholarship, vital for the communication of research results, for enhancing career prospects, and for education and teaching purposes. Its future nevertheless seems somewhat clouded as ‘publishing statistics...indicate a steadily rising price of publications with an accompanying decrease in unit

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sales...threaten[ing] the survival of an affordable illustrated monograph.’ (Battin, 1989: 4) The trend towards using fewer illustrations to cut costs can have an effect on the value of a publication; its usefulness is ‘seriously compromised when such publications rely heavily on verbal descriptions of the artworks and contain few or no pictures.’ (Brilliant, 1988: 122) The difficulties authors have in locating copyright holders and securing permission for reproduction of the work in a publication for a reasonable fee appears to be a real problem for art historians. Museums have been severely criticised for obstructing scholarship by making reproduction fees unaffordable for scholars. Sometimes it is necessary for authors and publishers to use less relevant images or none at all on purely practical or economic grounds. (Rees, 1995: 5)

In the field of architectural history, the publication of journal articles has reportedly become less and less important for scholars, serving only as an introduction to publishing for junior members of the profession. (Trachtenberg, 1988:210) Should this also be true of art history, it may partly explain the virtual non-existence of scholarly electronic publishing in the art history field, as the journal model is currently the dominant paradigm for that format. Undoubtedly securing permission to use or obtain digital images to accompany the text is another.

There is little indication that art publishers are about to start using digital images in book production. This is disappointing to many librarians and art historians who are hoping that when traditional print-on-paper art books are produced completely by electronic means and hence require digital images to be supplied, there will be a flow-on effect into other areas.

The higher education sector is undergoing dramatic transformation as universities seek to redefine themselves and their mission in the wake of drastic budget cuts. Teaching has perhaps been an undervalued activity in universities, perceived as not being accorded equal status with research, especially in terms of promotion for art historians. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in undergraduate teaching and increasing recognition is being given to those developing innovative programs which are viewed by management as a way to attract more students to the university. Teaching methodologies have re m a i n e d fairly static since the nineteenth century but distance education, open learning, computer mediated learning, multimedia teaching and learning materials, are offering new opportunities and challenges for art historians and for art librarians as well. Projects such as ArtServe, the Piero Project/ECIT (Electronic Compendium of Images and Text) and Project Delta serve as excellent examples of the use of networked digital images for teaching purposes. The growing number of conferences on the subject is further evidence of this trend. These innovations in curriculum and pedagogy will remain outside mainstream practices without major changes in institutional cultures that continue to rank humanities low in the provision of technology, without changes in the relationship of academics to librarians, information technologists and information re s sources (Summary Report of the Spring 1996 meeting of the CNI Task Force, 1996) and the support of the administration who still view the introduction of information technology in terms of slashing the costs of educational delivery.

3. The Digital Networked EnvironmentThe concept of a universal image library dates back to the nineteenth century and has been kept alive throughout the twentieth century, with its proponents becoming more optimistic with the advent of computer networks. Whilst technology advances might appear to make this possible in theory, in many ways the promise of universal access has become an increasingly unrealistic prospect if we consider the problems of conversion of materials, copyright and licensing of digital information, intellectual access, information overload and emerging alternative sources of digital images.

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The images to which scholars need access are scattered in perhaps tens of thousands of archives, research institutions, libraries, museums, conservation laboratories, government bodies, sales and auction houses and other collections around the world in countries with vast differences in their level of access to imaging and networking technology. Institutions outside the higher education sector often lack eve n the most basic facilities. Even today in the USA where one would expect penetration of the Internet to be the widest into the community, many major museums have no access at all. The same is true for major art museums in Australia until quite recently. Even within universities, inequities exist between campuses and within any given campus. These gaps are likely to widen as those with funds and expertise (especially the developers) continue to upgrade the quality and capability of their computing technology and those without struggle to maintain even the most basic facilities which are not capable of handling the increasingly sophisticated presentation of art information.

Many institutions are instigating imaging projects that will run in stand-alone mode or will be accessible only on campus networks. Digitisation of images per se is not likely to achieve major changes in work practices, in fact it may merely be transferring information from one medium to another. The history of photography can teach us a valuable lesson. It was not photography of art works by itself that transformed the study of art history in the nineteenth century but the powerful combination of photography and the printing press, that is, an efficient and cheap form of mass distribution which gave unparalleled access to images of works of art. In the late twentieth century, the network will be the agent of distribution.

Without a volume of images, networks will continue to remain relatively content poor for art historians. But we must ask how is that critical mass going to get there? Is the dream of open access to the world’s image collections merely a fantasy, the sort described by Theodore Roszak (1986: 156) as ‘so subliminally delusionary that it often eludes critical discussion...a vision deeply embedded in the Cult of Information.’

Some of the image libraries dating back to nineteenth century have millions of items; the average university teaching collection holds possibly between 100,000 and 500,000 items. Given the enormous scope of the field, where does one start to convert images from photographic to digital form? The following options a re possible: no conversion (new material received in electronic form), conversion on demand (image not requested is not converted), selective conversion (using various criteria), gradual retrospective conversion (as funds permit), large-scale retrospective conversion (wasteful since material never used is converted) and co-operative conversion (avoids duplication). (Hood et al, 1991: 248) All of these are now under way with the exception of the latter two options. The most desirable and cost effective option is obviously co-operative conversion but image libraries have no history of sharing information and no infrastructure for co-operation. Image libraries can continue to avoid the issue of information sharing whilst the focus remains on the acquisition and provision of information.

Copyright has been and continues to be problematic for image libraries, particularly those used for university teaching. The overwhelming bulk of their collection will have been acquired by photographic copying of images in publications - books, exhibition catalogues, journals - and other printed sources such as postcards. In the absence of clear legal guidelines, many librarians allowed themselves to believe they were immune from prosecution because the copying was for educational and research purposes. As reasonably isolated and autonomous units, image libraries have been able to continue their extensive and vigorous copying programs for decades. In a digital networked environment, libraries would become subject to greater scrutiny and control.

Recent and proposed changes to copyright law appear to benefit copyright holders and large commercial interests at the expense of libraries, museums and scholarship. (Kauffman, 1996: 2) The emergence of a multimedia industry with an insatiable appetite for images is implicated

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in these changes. Education and the arts are increasingly viewed as fair game by multimedia companies as intense competition forces them to seek more specialised market segments. The multimedia industry is viewed by governments as an area of enormous economic growth, therefore it is of concern to them that copyright laws are hampering investment. At the same time, rights holders are aggressively seeking ways to regain the control they had to a large extent lost with photography. It is hoped that these rights holders distinguish between the multinational multimedia corporation which wishes to use their images and the needs of image libraries, scholars and publishers when determining their fees.

As publishers, slide vendors and commercial agencies move to provide digital images themselves, rather than granting permission for others to digitise their slides or photographs, libraries will be inevitably forced to confront the issue of licensing rather than copyright. The use of images will be determined by a contract negotiated between the library and the vendor. Possible restrictions could extend to user types, what users can do with the material, the level and extent of access, time limitations, purchase or lease of images and archiving.

Further, a library’s ability to provide access to a wide variety of material might be compromised if continuing budget cuts result in insufficient funds to pay for licences or if rights holders decide not to offer material at reasonable rates or to discontinue non-profit-making material. (Lynch, 1994) The problem of compliance will be assisted by new advanced rights management technologies coming onto the market. These will provide ‘a secure distributed electronic commerce and rights management operating system layer that can protect copyright, ensure payment (if a fee is charged), collect usage information, enable distributed electronic value chains...’ as well as supporting transaction and subscription pricing models. (Summary report, 1996)

Image libraries have traditionally developed hierarchical classification schemes based on artist, medium, school, style, nationality and chronological time period to physically order images of art objects. This may have suited the prevailing pattern of teaching and scholarship at one stage, but developments in the scope of art history noted above have broadened the discipline to include non-western art, popular art and visual culture in general. Neither these nor forms of contemporary visual arts such as conceptual art and computer-generated art fit comfortably, if at all, into the old framework. Changes in academic curricula away from the chronologically based courses dealing with artists and their masterpieces towards other approaches, for example, interdisciplinary, Marxist, feminist, post-colonial and/or more theoretical models - linguistic, semiotic, psychoanalytical (Tickner,1994: 404) – have forced librarians to reconsider how well existing classification schemes cater for their users.

It has been suggested that the image database will solve the problem of physical organisation however it places great reliance on alternative methods of retrieval such as subject indexing, to date little used in image libraries apart fro m some specialist research collections. Ben Kessler (1993: 56) has rightly pointed out that ‘in an era of shrinking budgets, what depth of subject analysis can we truly afford to undertake? ’

In the digital networked environment the concept of access becomes the central motif.(Conway, 1996: 14) The art historian is no longer restricted to the image library at his/her institution and can access images from a potentially limitless number of sources from his/her workstation. With the proliferation of scholarly sub-specialities and the widening scope of art historical studies, one single library is less and less likely to have a sufficient proportion of images to satisfy their users. As the physical and intellectual boundaries of the image library dissolve, the art historian may find him/herself searching not only through art image databases but those from other disciplines with an ongoing interest in images.

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Art historians generally find browsing a useful information-seeking tactic but searching through vast, unstructured batches of images is time-consuming and inefficient without some initial narrowing of a search to produce a workable number of hits. The Internet’s current state of disorder may have ‘much to offer [those] 20th century scholars dissatisfied with strict disciplinarity...looking for unpredictable connections, jumping across scholarly borders’ (Stafford, 1994: 287) but it is increasingly coming to resemble a Cabinet of Curiosities, the eighteenth century precursor of the museum that had no single organising principle or systemisation, ‘bereft of labels and shapeless by any classical canon...unmoored from past context, this sea of fragments was incomprehensible, and by not possessing a pre-established meaning...[it was] open to continual interpretation... belonging to a totality forever evading the spectator.’(Stafford, 1994: 251)

The glut of images retrieved from inefficient searching mechanisms may become a problem for researchers. Automated information filtering and other improvements in locating and effectively accessing images on networks are desperately needed, however many of these are still in their infancy. One solution to this information overload is for scholars to set up their own private digital image collection as many of them did with slides. From their own computer workstation , the art historian could set up links to highly relevant databases on the network, customise subsets of those databases, download miscellaneous images found through browsing or specific images to which they need to refer to constantly. The scope for this option is increasing as scholars a re allowed access to material that libraries are not, for example, the Corbis Corporation, a commercial digital image archive, allows individual users (but not libraries) to download images for personal use only.

Evolution or revolution?The introduction and use of digital imaging are rarely considered in the wider context of the scholarly communication system as a whole but in terms of one of its many elements, for example, the image library, university teaching or the art museum. Given the size of the system, its enormous investment in photographic images and the technology to create, store, project and print them, as well as the nature of academic institutions, it is difficult to accept the scenario of revolutionary change as proposed by some writers. What is clear is that there are small pockets of change and definite scope for even greater change as the use of digital images and network technology begins to infiltrate other areas.

Don R. Swanson has argued the case for evolutionary change in library and information services. He maintains that evolutionary mechanisms such as variation-and-selection underlie the processes by which knowledge (and thus the library) grows and are also central to an understanding of how information services change, improve and adapt to new conditions. (Swanson, 1979: 78) This concept of evolutionary change offers a more useful framework in which to view the seemingly uneven and haphazard implementation of small digital imaging applications and their influence on the art historical scholarly communication system.

Evolution can be slow, expensive and inefficient as a process of change, and unfortunately, ‘there are decades of difference between having a good idea, turning it into a very interesting prototype and actually building a system.’ (Schmitt, 1991: 413) The rapid proliferation of small uncoordinated digitisation projects unguided by any systematic plan has been seen as a major problem but Swanson’s model, which explains how large scale systems behave when subsystems or components are able to determine their own course of action, allows us to understand this type of activity as beneficial rather than detrimental to the advancement of the general good. The need for centralised control and overall goals when building large-scale networked systems typified the ill-fated approaches taken by the art and museum world in the 1980s. According to Swanson, attempting to impose ‘overall goals or to design exact

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blueprints, for systems whose components are people and institutions in pursuit of their own goals and interests’ is an exercise in futility. (Swanson, 1979: 84) Another reason to avoid large-scale long-range systems planning is the ever present possibility of large-scale failure. If experimentation is allowed to take place at the level of small individual components within the system, only that single component is eliminated with failure. Innovation, imagination and experimentation need to be encouraged. The trial-and-error elimination mechanism explains how new approaches emerge, fail to deliver on function, usability, cost, etc, and consequently die. The successful traits of systems that survive are transmitted by imitation. The improved variant becomes dominant and serves as a new point of departure for further developments.

Many of the imaging projects to date have been driven largely by the technology itself and by institutions. Often librarians are designing and implementing imaging systems where scholars are the intended user group. Very few investigations into the art historian’s information seeking practices, information needs and uses have been undertaken. In the past, librarians may have been able to base the development of new information services on the flimsy conclusions of the handful of out-of-date surveys supplemented by their own ‘intuitive grasp of the information-seeking process, [of the art historian] resulting from their own scholarly activity and their observation of users’, (Stam, 1984: 117) but this approach will no longer suffice. Current research that underlines the importance of the social aspects of the user group must be taken into consideration when designing digital information resources. (Covi, 1996) Research and scholarship is the core activity of art historical practice, yet these needs appear to have been sacrificed by systems developers because they are complex and costly. Michael Ester has declared that ‘no one is asking about, let alone implementing, models of use that are sympathetic with the way professionals work.’ (Ester, 1994: 23) Perhaps it is time for scholars to voice their concerns more assertively and to participate in the development of image databases.

It has been claimed that the real value of information technology is its ability to support relationships and the collaboration which arises out of them. (Schrage, 1991) The time may have come for a new partnership between librarians and art historians. There is more need than ever for librarians to understand the methods of scholarly endeavour as well as teaching, and for scholars to understand and value the contribution that librarians can make to their work in order to ‘avoid the present danger that scholars and librarians will pursue separate adventures in technology without coordination between the two communities and without even elementary information being exchanged...Fruitful dialogue, mutual respect and a keen interest in each other’s work are all essential if we are to take full advantage of new technologies.’ (Gorman, 1991:75)

ConclusionTechnological improvements in the last decade have raised the expectations of art librarians, art historians and art museum curators that significant benefits will result from their embracing the digital conversion of information resources, in particular visual materials, and pursuing network accessibility to cultural, archival and research organisations. The technical issues involved in realising the full potential of a digital networked information environment constitute far less of an obstacle than the institutional ones. The established patterns of the art history discipline such as the widespread use of photographic reproductions and a slow uptake of technology constitute fundamental barriers to the introduction of digital imaging technology, however it can be seen that changes in some components of the scholarly communication process indicate potential sites for breakthroughs.

An examination of assumptions underlying the conception of the universally accessible digital image library reveals that, while many of the problems experienced by users of the traditional

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photo-based image library may be eventually eliminated, the persistent problems will be exacerbated and new challenges created. Swanson’s model of evolutionary change in libraries and information services allows us to see the present proliferation of small, idiosyncratic imaging activities in terms of the trial and-error-elimination process as opposed to the oft-cited description of a ‘cacophony’ lacking a unified direction. The cumulative effect of ongoing modest developments in technology can initiate radical new possibilities as much, if not more, than the broad sweep of revolutionary change in which old structures and processes are discarded.

The needs of the core activities of the discipline - scholarship and research - should be the prime focus of imaging projects as opposed to the needs of the organisation. Librarians have so far been the instigators of new systems not scholars who need to become more involved. Now is the time to forge new partnerships between librarians and academics. Leadership from professional and scholarly associations and alliances is vital to the clarification of priorities and the development of a clear sense of direction for the future.

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About this paper

This paper is an abridged version of a research paper submitted for the Master of Arts (Librarianship) degree which the author completed at Monash University in 1996.

© Jennifer Durran 1997 12

In 1997 it won for the author the inaugural Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship, an annual award administered by the State Library of New South Wales for an outstanding original paper on any aspect of librarianship. The award was presented at the Jean Arnot Memorial Luncheon and Lecture at Parliament House, Sydney on 7 April 1997. The paper was subsequently published in LASIE, vol 28, no.2. June 1997 14 – 27.

It has been cited in the following publications:

Bauer, Charly and Jane A. Carlin. “The Case for Collaboration: The OhioLINK Digital Media Center,” in Digital Images and Art Libraries in the Twenty-First Century. Ed: Susan Wyngaard. Haworth Press, 2003, pp. 69-86.

Henri, Janine Jacqueline. “Management, Public Service, and Access Issues: Serving Special Collections in an Architecture Branch Library,“ in The Twenty-first century Art Librarian. Ed. Terrie L. Wilson. Haworth Press, 2003, pp 57-76.

About the author

Jennifer Durran, BA, Dip Ed, Grad Di p Lib, MA (Lib)

At the time of writing the author was Visual Arts Librarian at Monash University, Melbourne,

Email: jdurran@netspace.net.au

© Jennifer Durran 1997 13