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The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunstbibuotheken (AKB) and its members

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Thomas Lersch
Thomas Lersch*
Affiliation:
Library, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Meiserstr. 10, D-80333 München, Germany
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Abstract

Bekanntlich ist die Kulturpolitik in Deutschland, anders als in Frankreich und England, über weite Strecken föderalistisch organisiert. So existiert denn auch in der Bundesrepublik weder eine Nationalbibliothek noch eine nationale bzw. zentrale Kunstbibliothek. In Anbetracht dieser Situation haben sich 1964 die sechs großen (west) deutschen Kunstbibliotheken von überregionaler Bedeutung zu einer Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunstbibliotheken (AKB) zusammengeschlossen, die durch enge Kooperation ihrer Mitglieder eine optimale Literaturversorgung und -erschließung sicherstellen soil. Im Rahmen eines von der DFG gefÖrderten Programms, das 1972 angelaufen ist, wurden die Sammelschwerpunkte der teilnehmenden Bibliotheken aufeinander abgestimmt. Durch ihre kooperative Erwerbungspolitik erfüllen die (inzwischen sieben) Mitgliedsbibliotheken der AKB heute in gewisser Hinsicht die Funktion einer dezentralen Nationalbibliothek für Kunstgeschichte.

Unlike France and the United Kingdom, the organization of cultural affairs in Germany is strongly determined by federalism. So there is no national library, nor is there a particular national art library. In 1964, the six bigger (West) German art libraries of supra-regional importance formed a loose association called Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Kunstbibliotheken (AKB). The purpose of the AKB is to foster co-operation on different levels (acquisition, cataloguing, etc). A co-operative acquisitions programme has been operated by the participating libraries since 1972; it is mainly financed by the German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Thanks to this co-operation the member institutions of the AKB function in some way as a decentralized national art library.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , 1996 , pp. 5 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1996

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References

1. Major parts of this article have already been published in French in 1993 (see the article quoted in note 12) and were part of a talk that I gave in March 1996 at the invitation of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Japan Art Documentation Society. Dates and facts have been brought up-to-date.Google Scholar
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