The London Library, an independent subscription lending library and registered educational charity, has been providing a wide selection of books for loan to members in all aspects of the humanities since 1841. Books and periodicals on applied art and the history of art, in all the major European languages, form an increasingly important part of its collections. The Library is embarking on a period of extension and development, and welcomes new members.

The Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels (ZADIK = Central Archive of the International Art Trade) was established in 1992 by the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien (BVDG), the association of German art dealers, and is the only research archive in the world that specialises in collecting and preserving documents and information from the art market. The history, purpose, collection profile and work of this still very young art archive is described here.

The longer you ignore those boxes – of letters, diaries, papers, photographs, tapes – that are under your desk, in your closet, stashed in your storage room, the greater the danger of losing valuable history forever. This is the true tale of how one small non-profit arts organization saved an oral history of American art that was on the verge of, quite literally, fading into oblivion.

A set of papers becomes an archive when its life as a series of active documents is finished and they are deemed worthy of permanent preservation. Archives are not, however, an ending but rather a beginning. Although one of the major functions of a repository is to store and preserve, one of the other challenges for archivists is how to activate their collections and exploit the latent potential of the silent memory that is stored in the boxes. This article outlines how the archive at the Henry Moore Institute is attempting to do this.

Founded in 1954, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art collects, preserves and makes available primary sources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items strong, its collections comprise the world’s largest single source for letters, diaries, financial records, unpublished writings, sketchbooks, scrapbooks and photographs created by artists, critics, collectors, art dealers and art societies – the raw material for scholarship in American art.

Trade literature at Winterthur is broadly defined and is collected in many formats, including published trade catalogs, printed ephemera, drawings, manuscript account books, magazines and salesperson’s samples. Each kind of source contributes to a better understanding of America’s rich heritage in early handicraft, more modern production of goods, and domestic life. Examples of Winterthur’s holdings suggest a rich and much larger collection that is available for research.