ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Art Subsection Titles for Reprinting and Microfilming

At the business meeting of the Art Subsection at the ALA Convention in New York in 1966, a suggestion was made to form a committee to investigate a program for microfilming and reprinting of unavailable source material in the field of art history. The membership felt that this was a worthwhile project as individual requests for reprinting had received scant attention from reprint publishers and microfilm companies.

A committee was appointed which included Carol Selby, then librarian at the Detroit Institute of Arts, as Chairman, with Herbert Scherer, art librarian of the University of Minnesota, and William J. Dane, principal art librarian, Newark Public Library, as committee members. The committee decided on the following plan of action. First, to set limitations on the kinds of books to be suggested; second, to canvass the membership for titles; third, to compile a list of the results and arrange for its distribution to interested publishers and to the membership.

The following criteria were established for titles to be submitted.

1) books should not be dependent wholly on illustrations which might reproduce poorly;

2) the copyright should have expired;

3) the books should be of scholarly appeal (i.e., monographs, source books, etc.);

4) long runs would not be eligible; a volume or two or a periodical might be acceptable, but not a lengthy run.

In general, the type of material to be considered was to include early guide books, catalogues of holdings of cities and museums, early catalogues raisonnes, sales catalogues of historic firms, diaries and biographies by artists and their contemporaries which referred directly to the art life of the times, and early books and monographs on the theory of art.

The present committee plans to bring the following list to the direct attention of the editors of art reprint publishers and microfilm firms.— Committee on Microfilm and Reprints, Art Subsection, Subject Specialists Section, ACRL.