Electronic networking has been welcomed in Australia not least because of its potential to help solve problems of distances within Australia and of the isolation of Australia. In the world as a whole, the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, is transforming the communication of art information and access to art images. Three Australian Web servers focus on the visual arts: Art Serve, Diva, and AusArts. A number of initiatives intended to provide online bibliographic databases devoted to Australian art were launched in the 1980s. More recently a number of CD-ROMs have been published. As elsewhere, art librarians in Australia need new skills to integrate these products of new technology into the art library, and to transform the latter into a multimedia resource centre.

The quality of the library of the future will be measured not only in terms of its collections, but also in terms of the diversity and efficiency of its electronic services. Therefore, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek at The Hague is building an Advanced Information Workstation for the humanities. With this multimedia workstation, users can easily locate and consult sources on the local network (OPAC, CD-ROMs, databases on several collections) and services and databases on national and international networks. Facilities for downloading and processing information will also be offered. Care has been taken to ensure that the Advanced Information Workstation facilitates access, through full bibliographic descriptions and selected keywords, to sources of art history information on the Internet, as well as to specialised on-line bibliographies such as Art Index.

Sheffield Hallam University possesses a large number of drawings by the sculptor George Fullard (1923-1973). Concern regarding the conservation of these drawings led to a discussion of how to provide access to them in the future. The result was an electronic book, available as a multimedia CD-ROM but which could also be made available on networks, and which can be approached from a variety of intellectual and interest levels.

The Getty Art History Information Program has joined with MUSE Educational Media in a project bringing together seven universities and seven art museums for the purpose of making digital images of works of art available for study and teaching via campus networks. Beyond the immediate benefits to its participants, the project is designed to develop methods and guidelines for the academic use of digitized museum-owned materials at colleges and universities. Columbia University and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts are two of the participants in the project, which is remarkable for the level of collaboration which it is achieving between museums and universities.

In Japan, art museums have created databases for management, educational and promotional purposes, rather than for research. At the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, a group consisting of a librarian, three curators, and a systems specialist, embarked in 1984 on a four year project to assemble and test a system which, utilising machine-readable thesauri and classification systems developed in Western countries, will, it is hoped, facilitate research into Western art.

As a pilot project, a low-cost image database of selected works in the Aberdeen Art Gallery has been created. The database is available to members of the public in the Gallery’s library. It is hoped that the project can be developed further, with a CD-ROM as a possible outcome.