The National Library of Australia provides the following pages relating to the Visual Arts Forum:

1. Guidelines for the Description of Non-Book Resources in Visual Arts Collections.
2. Visual Arts Forum Papers.
3. Visual Arts Forum Survey.
4. Visual Arts Forum Minutes.

7 May 2004, National Library of Australia.

In May 2003 the Visual Arts Information Planning Group met to discuss problems facing Australian art libraries and ARLIS/ANZ, to identify the issues and seek solutions. As a result of this meeting, the National Library conducted an extensive survey of libraries supporting Australian visual arts research, the results of which are summarised in one of the following papers. The findings of the survey were the basis for the Visual Arts Forum, which was hosted by the National Library of Australia in May 2004.

The June 2003 issue of the ARLIS/ANZ Journal included a brief article by Jill More entitled Australian visual arts information resources, which put the Forum into context. Briefly, the visual arts librarians were seeking ways to take advantage of developments in digital technology and the web environment, and to gain support for individual arts libraries in their attempt to make their resources available to users and researchers. ARLIS/ANZ sought the assistance of the National Library, noting that much of this material was not accessible through the National Bibliographic Database and that the visual arts are not represented in the Australian Subject Gateways and are not highly visible in the Australian Libraries Gateway. While web access to some art library resources is developing slowly, there is no centralised access and the opportunities offered by the web are not being widely realised in the visual arts area.

The purpose of the Forum was to develop a plan of action to deal with issues which could be addressed at a national level. A list of invited attendees was prepared by ARLIS/ANZ and the VAIP Group. Due to space limitations the numbers were limited to forty people, but these included representatives from national, state, gallery, museum, educational and arts and cultural organisations and libraries Australia-wide.

The Forum was held on 7 May 2004. It provided an opportunity to bring together a wide range of information users and providers in a co-ordinated and co-operative approach to meeting the needs of Australian visual arts research. Dot point papers were prepared on the relevant issues as a basis for discussion. The Forum was chaired by the National Librarian, Jan Fullerton, and a list of Action Items arising was prepared by Andrew Wells, University Librarian of the University of New South Wales.

Lively discussion was only inhibited by lack of time, and one of the recommendations was for a follow-up forum no later than May 2005 to review progress.

Progress will also be reported at the ARLIS/ANZ Conference in September 2004, and in future issues of the Journal.

ARLIS/ANZ takes this opportunity to thank the National Library of Australia for its support and leadership. We look forward to realising the opportunities which will arise out of the Forum.

Jill More
College of Fine Arts Librarian
The University of New South Wales

Visual Arts Forum Minutes
Minutes of the meeting held at the National Library of Australia, Friday May 7 2004.
(minutes attached to this page).

Visual Arts Forum Actions Arising

7 May 2004, National Library of Australia

1. The NLA to place the results of its survey of visual arts libraries on its web site with a link from the ARLIS/ANZ website.
   
2. Kinetica and ARLIS/ANZ collaborate on designing a workshop on cataloguing prior to the ARLIS/ANZ Conference in September to address the following issues:
   
   1. Identifying and resolving barriers to contribution to the National Bibliographic Database from visual arts libraries
   2. Identifying and resolving cataloguing workflow issues in visual arts libraries
   3. Setting guidelines for the description of guerrilla resources, at both collection and item levels
   4. Investigating arrangements for shared responsibilities among visual arts libraries for cataloguing of guerrilla resources
   5. Testing the efficiency of harvester gathering methods for NBD contribution through a pilot project with some small visual arts libraries
3. Kinetica to investigate provision of the SCIPIO database from the Research Libraries Group as a core service to increase the amount of copy cataloguing data available to visual arts libraries
   
4. ARLIS/ANZ and the National Library to work together on establishing a working group to address the issues outlined in the Indexing and Databases paper presented at the Forum. Issues include sustainability, coverage, retrospective conversion, discovery, availability. The feasibility of creating a portal or gateway for Australian visual arts resources could also be addressed by this working group. The working group should aim to report on these issues by May 2005.
   
5. ARLIS/ANZ and the National Library to work together on establishing a working group to address the issues outlined in the papers on digitisation presented at the Forum. Issues include metadata, technical standards, rights management, shared effort, and educational uses of digitised images. The working group should aim to report on these issues by May 2005.
   
6. The National Library to investigate incorporating rights management data into the metadata format used in PictureAustralia.
   
7. The CASL Consortium to investigate including the Art Gallery of South Australia in the negotiations for Grove Art Online as a test case for involving small institutions.
   
8. ARLIS/ANZ review its purpose, goals and activities over the next twelve months.
   
9. All attendees of the Forum to promulgate information about the LearnScope project at the Hunter Institute in order to stimulate development on an online community of practice in digitisation of images for educational uses.
   
10. A second Visual Arts Forum to be held in May 2005.

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