“Art libraries in WorldCat” is integrating the art libraries participating in WorldCat (www.worldcat.org) as one collective target into artlibraries.net. Thus, It is a ‘hybrid’ approachallowing to test functionalities provided by WorldCat without abandoning the existing artlibraries.net structure.For the time being, there is an intentional overlap between the “Art libraries in WorldCat” target and existing individual targets.

“Art Iibraries in WordCat” comprises the following library catalogs (catalogs having already an individual artlibraries.net target are marked with an asterisk *):

Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth

Art Institute of Chicago

Bard Graduate Center, New York

Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives, New York *

Centre Canadien d'Architecture, Montréal *

Cleveland Museum of Art

Frick Art Reference Library, New York *

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles *

Harvard University - Fine Arts Library, Cambridge, MA

Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), Paris *

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Kunstbibliothek - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin *

Kunsthalle Basel

Kunstmuseum Basel *

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Musée du quai Branly,Paris

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York *

National Art Library, London *

National Gallery of Art Library, Washington

National Gallery of Australia Research Library, Canberra

National Gallery of Canada Library. Ottawa *

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Rijksmuseum Research Library, Amsterdam *

Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA), Zürich *

Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg *

Winterthur Museum Library, Winterthur,DE

Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), Karlsruhe

This approach could eventually lead to eliminate individual targets also covered by the WorldCat API and to maintain as individual artlibraries.net targets only those which cannot be accessed via WorldCat. Organizationally speaking, this would mean to reduce significantly the current number of targets. Technically speaking, less targets means improved reaction time. Financially speaking, the solution could strongly reduce the general maintenance costs. Relying on the options provided by the WorldCat API would probably confer much more international significance and acceptance to artlibraries.net, especially in North America. For the moment, Uwe Dierolf has implemented this WorldCat target into artlibraries.net to provide a basis for discussion at the next general artlibraries.net meeting.

Furthermore, as a result of the discussions on the future of art bibliography, started on the initiative of the Getty Research Institute in early 2010, and continued at the General Meeting of the artlibraries.net partners in Lisbon, October 2010, OCLC representatives involved in both the Getty meetings (New York City (April 2010) and Los Angeles (June 2010)) and the Lisbon meeting as well, agreed to realize a more ambitious pilot discovery tool, based on the data pool of the OCLC/WorldCat and a special API taking into account the data of 30 art libraries participating in WorldCat. This search interface, called ‘Art Libraries Discovery Experiment’, so far restricted to libraries participating in WorldCat (http://experimental.worldcat.org/aldp/) , is a pilot project fordiscipline-specific access to WorldCat, with more functionalities than the experimental artlibraries.net target. It shall also be discussed at the next artlibraries.net general meeting in Paris (September 27-29, 2012).