Book Library

Provenance help with a bookplate

2012-01-06T12:16:00.002Z

Descrizzione delle imagini dipinte da Rafaelle d'Urbino nelle camere del Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano, a work by Giovanni Pietro Bellori.

We are fortunate to have two copies of this work and the copy that was part of the John Shearman bequest bears the bookplate to the left and we would like to make reference to it in the catalogue record.

This volume was once owned by the bibliophile Gustavo Camillo Galletti and bears its stamp on the title page.

Can anyone recognize the bookplate and identify whether it is another provenance marking for the Biblioteca Galletti, or if it is one used by another library or collector? Any help would be appreciated.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections

BOOK CLEANING CABS-BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH - NOVEMBER

2011-11-26T10:22:00.006Z

As a conservator you know why it is important to clean books, but sometimes it feels like you are not making any appreciable difference. Until you take a photograph half way through a cleaning job and you see the value of a whole day with a smoke sponge ...

This is a book from CABS - Nouveau traité de toute l’architecture : ou l’art de bastir ; utile aux entrepreneurs et aux ouvriers, by Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, 1714 - that is being prepared to have its back board re-attached.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections

New Book Display

2011-10-26T12:13:00.007+01:00

The first New Book Display of the term has an eclectic mix of material and we have chosen a few of the highlights to share with you.

For those of you new to the concept, the New Books Display comprises of three stands: Books, UK Exhibition Catalogues and International Exhibition Catalogues. It is a show case of the newest editions to the expanding collections at the Courtauld Book Library.

On this month’s book stand there is a range of material from Photographs from the war in Afghanistan to Painting in nineteenth century Hungary. Two highlights from the stand are Colour Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay. This book “focuses not only on her art but also on the Avant-Garde fashion design from her own Atelier Simultane in Paris during the 1920s as well as textiles she designed for the Metz & Co. department store in Amsterdam in the 1930s.” This beautiful book showcases her drawing, painting and fashion designs through full bleed and cut to white reproductions of her work. The design of the book displays the clean cut graphic nature of her work and will be of interest to anyone looking at early to mid-twentieth century fashion and textile design.

On a more modern note, the widely recognised artist, Ai WeiWei’s latest book is also on the new book stand. Ai WeiWei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews and Digital Rants, 2006-2009. “For more than three years, Ai WeiWei turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings.” This book is a perhaps a view of things to come, when looking at the commentary on all subjects that artists are making, via digital technologies. The digital age is transforming many aspects of our lives and how we communicate and this compilation of writings from Ai WeiWei are a nice example of how we can examine the thought processes of artists expressed in the self-publishing world of blogging.

The catalogue for The Spanish line: drawings from Ribera to Picasso can be found on the UK exhibition catalogues stand. This small volume has prints of the variety of drawings by Spanish artists currently exhibited in the Courtauld Gallery. This stand also holds the catalogues for the other exciting shows taking place in London. Degas and the ballet: picturing movement takes a new look at the artist’s characteristic studies of dancers. The catalogue is illustrated with the drawings, pastels, paintings, sculpture and also – “establishing the importance of early visual technologies to Degas’s work for the first time” – photographs taken by the artist and samples of contemporary film.

Taking place at the V&A at the moment, Postmodernism: style and subversion, 1970-1990 continues their programme of ‘grand narratives’ of twentieth-century style and takes a look at all aspects of postmodernist design. The vibrant catalogue brings together architecture, fashion, film, music, interiors and urban planning, and demonstrates the complexity and contradiction of postmodernism. The catalogue’s 20-year span follows the movement from its beginnings on the periphery to being the dominant visual style before inevitably collapsing in on itself.

The new book display also shows the wealth of varied exhibitions taking place worldwide; we currently have three exciting catalogues from New York’s Metropolitan Museum alone. Infinite Jest: caricature and satire from Leonardo to Levine draws from the Metropolitan’s collections of drawings and prints to explore humour in art from the Italian Renaissance to the present. The catalogue examines how paper and printmaking allowed caricature to flourish and how the visual language of satire has “remained surprisingly consistent over time.”

Stieglitz and his artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe showcases and examines the collection of Alfred Stieglitz, a master photographer in his own right and a collector and promoter of some of the biggest names in the early twentieth-century art world. Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India 1100 – 1900 is a beautifully illustrated catalogue which “sets out to dispel the conventional view of Indian painting as an anonymous activity” by featuring 110 works by the most eminent Indian painters, many of whom are named for the first time thanks to recent scholarship.

There are many more interesting books and catalogues recently acquired by the Book Library on the New Book Display so take a look next time you’re in the library. The displays are changed regularly and we’ll keep you updated when this happens.

Anna Casey and Jennifer Laurenson
Graduate Trainee Library Assistants

New Image Resource

2011-10-14T11:26:00.010+01:00

Bridgeman Education: free trial

“A unique and educational resource from the world’s leading source of fine art, cultural and historical images.” Bridgeman Education.

The Book Library has just set up a free trial for an online image resource called Bridgeman Education. Bridgeman Education enables the user to access approximately 36,000 images all of which are copyright-cleared for educational use. Users can create slide shows and download images for use in research, assignments, presentations and lectures.

The free trial is available for all Courtauld staff and students and is active from Monday 17^th October to Friday 11^th November 2011. If you are on campus follow this link to start exploring. For off campus access please email serials@courtauld.ac.uk for username and password.

Please let us know what you think of the resource by emailing thoughts and observations to serial@courtauld.ac.uk. General comments on the use of online images in art historical research are also welcome.

Welcome to new readers of the Book Library blog

2011-10-03T11:11:00.002+01:00

This is just a quick post to welcome everyone new to the Courtauld Institute of Art this academic year. On this blog you’ll find news and updates from the staff of the Book Library. We’re here to help you so please feel free to ask us any questions you might have whenever you’re in the Library or see us around the Institute. If you want to know who we are and what we do, have a look at the link LIBRARY STAFF: Find out who we are to the right of this post.

Antony Hopkins

Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries

Saturday opening

2011-09-29T14:40:00.000+01:00

SATURDAY OPENING

The Book Library and IT Centre will open on Saturdays this Autumn Term (Saturday 8 October 2011 to Saturday 10 December 2011 inclusive) from 10:00 to 17:00. We are offering a reference service only, which means you will not be able to borrow books, and a limited photocopying facility (this can only be provided on an ‘as is’ basis: if the machine breaks down then the service will not be available for the remainder of that day).

It is also worth remembering that we have a small number of books in the reference section at Z32, about good study techniques, and academic writing, which include:

Barnet, S., A short guide to writing about art. 7th ed., New York ; London : Longman, 2002. (Z32 BAR)

Chambers, E. and A. Northedge, The arts good study guide. 2nd ed., Milton Keynes : Open University, 2008. (Z32 CHA)

TENDER LOVING REPAIRS - PT. 2

2011-06-29T16:50:00.014+01:00

A couple of months ago I wrote a posting about repairs undertaken by Camberwell book conservation students. Well all the books have now been returned and I'd like to update you on some of the more complicated repairs.

One of the books, Eugène Müntz's Leonardo da Vinci: artist, thinker, and man of science, had the most comprehensive treatment. My classmate Salvador Alcantara documented how he treated the book:

Rebacking - Pull off original spine, linings and (animal) glue. The latter by applying thick layer of wheat starch paste, letting it pull the glue for several minutes then clean with the help of a bonefolder trying not to disturb the original sewing. Operation repeated until almost completely clean. New linings - two strips of kozo-shi tissue, the size of the spine, applied with wheat starch paste. A hollow back was discarded. New linen cloth spine overlapping 1-1.5 cm on each board, to be covered with previously lifted original cloth. This is trimmed approx. 1-2 mm from the joint.

Split inner hinges - Narrow strip of wove paper. Wheat starch paste. The book resting in flat position, the cover must be opened at about 135º for the pasting of the hinge.

Worn (green) corners - Locally lift the minimal amount of covering material (original cloth and pastedown). To rebuild corners: millboard shavings mixed with wheat starch paste. Then cover/reshape with piece of kawanaka tissue. Paste down the previously lifted cloth and endpaper.

Reposition of former spine titling as a full-size label on new spine - Edges ought to be pared to flatten the union label-support as much as possible. Wheat starch paste.

Book shoe - Provided to avoid further detachment of the text block while stored in upright position. Millboard of an appropriate thickness to match the width of the square at the tail, held in place by a U-shaped polyester film (Melinex) wrapping of the text block.

This book lives on the Oversize shelves at D623.LEO MUE.

Salvador also treated a quick reference book, Henry Liddell's Greek-English lexicon from 1968. This has a substantial textblock, but the boards and spine were insufficient to support the weight of the block. In addition to some small repairs, the main improvment for the book is the addition of a protective blue manila wrapper. It has a polyester film (Melinex) window on spine to make title visible and it is tied at the fore edge with two cotton tapes integrated in the cover. This solution also allows a better upright storage of the book by means of a tighter holding of the text block.

Although not yet fully catalogued, this book lives in the Quick ref section (by the photocopiers) at shelfmark QUICK REF Z33.G

Naomi Mitamura and Katie Kelsey both worked on Paul Ortwin Rave's Genius der Baukunst. It has a beautiful flesh-toned paper cover which hides the very fragile, crumbly biscuit board boards.

After much experimentation, Naomi found a way to use Japanese tissue to build up the corners, where the board had crumbled away. Katie also worked on the corners, before Naomi re-attached the spine covering, using Japanese tissue, and toned the repairs to maintain the same flesh.

This book is also awaiting full cataloguing, but will eventually be in B588 somewhere.

The last book has also been repaired with toned Japanese paper. Maudie Gunzi found that the Swedish Nationalmuseum catalogue of its Italien paintings and drawings had a solid sewing structure, but the leather on the spine and corners had rotted.

She put a hollow in the existing spine, and covered the areas where the spine leather had fallen off, with toned Japanese tissue. Just in case the remaining leather crumbles, she created a 4-flap wrapper for the book that has corners that will catch any bits that fall off.

Once again, I'd like to point out that these repairs are not full conservation treatments, they are just to stabilize the items and to be able to use them. And, as a result, some of the aesthetic delicacy has not been prioritized.

Other books were repaired by Lizzie Courtney, Mary Garner, Lisa Knight, Olga Martinosi and myself.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections

Oxford University Art History Podcasts

2011-06-14T11:09:00.006+01:00

Oxford University’s Open Spires project aims to make recordings of lectures and other events at the university available to a global audience. A wide range of subjects are covered, but most interesting for Courtauld Students are the range of history of art lectures that are available.

The podcast index includes 13 art history lectures covering a diverse range of subjects from Michaelangelo to Modernism and Chinese visual culture. Those with a particular interest in Surrealism are particularly well served by the eight lectures by Dawn Ades.

Contemporary practice is also covered by the inclusion of video and sound recordings of graduates from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art discussing their final year work. Architecture is covered in a lecture by Norman Foster which is followed by a symposium on the subject of the Future of Cities.

The collection is growing and it is worthwhile investigating other subject areas to find material relevant to art history. The philosophy lectures include one on aesthetics and philosophy of art, and if you need a crash course in general philosophy, the 41 lectures included here are a good place to start. The podcast index also includes recordings of papers relating to the study of Soviet states, which include discussions of visual art, film, theatre and music.

The podcasts are released using Creative Commons licenses. Many of them have Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licenses meaning they can be ‘reused and redistributed globally provided that it is used in a non-commercial way and the reuse is attributed to the person/people who made the recording. If a person derives a new work from the recording, the new work may be distributed provided it is released under the same license.’ (http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/openspires.html).

Image: Edd Morgan, 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wzpr/2418778449/

Lloyd Roderick
Graduate Trainee Library Assistant.

Emblemata, Emblemata, Emblemata - May

2011-04-30T08:44:00.013+01:00

What is an emblem book? It is a form that was tremendously popular during the Renaissance. It is believed that the Italian lawyer Andrea Alciato devised the first such book. The books themselves contained small illustrations (a bit like a modern thumbnail image) that were accompanied by "a brief title or motto, an edifying verse epigram, and often an additional explanatory text in verse or prose." (Gordon Collection: Emblem Books http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/portfolio/gordon/emblem/) These books were created by individuals and reveal their own outlook, but they also "communicate moral, political, or religious values in ways that have to be decoded by the viewer." (Glasgow University Emblem Project. http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/) They often have classical or humanist sources, such as Erasmus's Adages. (Gordon Collection: Emblem Books http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/portfolio/gordon/emblem/)

Alciato introduced the first Emblematum liber, published by Heinrich Steyner and printed in Augsburg in 1531. Scholarship suggests that Alciato himself had nothing to do with this series of editions, but that his associate and friend Conrad Peutinger commissioned the publications based on unillustrated epigrams, etc., that "had circulated among Alciato's friends in manuscript" (Andrea Alciato's Emblematum. Alciato at Glasgow. http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/books.php?id=A31a&o=). Several versions were printed in continental Europe and were collected widely.

This month's CABS Book-of-the-Month is a version printed, we believe, in Leiden by Franciscus Raphelengius (son-in-law of Christoph Plantin) in 1608. We don't know for sure because the title page is a hand drawn copy that was added at some stage, possibly to replace the original title page which was destroyed. But one inclined to conspiracy theories might think that it was a deliberate attempt to associate an inferior copy with a renowned publishing house and established edition of the book. Who knows?

This book is fascinating for a number of other reasons, mostly relating to its binding. First of all, the book has no writing on the spine, but Alciatus is written vertically on the fore-edge of the book, two letters per row. Anyone interested in library history will know that bookshelves as we know them only came into common usage well into the era of the printed book. Manuscripts and early printed books were usually laid flat on lecterns or shelves and were often chained to the furniture. It was only with the mass production of books that forced libraries to find a more space-efficient way of storing them. Initially they were shelved upright, fore-edge facing out. Blind-tooled decoration was common in northern Europe into the 17th century and that did not lend itself well to spine titles. With the spread of gold-tooling from northern Africa via Italy and Spain, which was a more visible way of marking the spine, books began to be shelved spine outwards.

We know very little about the book's provenance other than it was given to the Courtauld in 1978 in accordance with the bequest of the art historian and collector Dame Joan Evans. But if the book was published in The Netherlands it was northern Europe and the binding tells us a bit more. The book has been sewn onto pasteboard boards using 4 parchment thongs, which are visible because there are no pastedowns. These are all features of that suggest the binding is contemporary to the publication of the book, if 1608 is correct.

The covering is brown calf, blind tooled with floral and compass motif stamps, one of which incorporates the initials RW. The initials could be those of the owner of the book, although they are more likely to have been those of the binder or the finisher (the person who decorated the binding). The initials also suggest a northern European origin, as the letter W appears in Spanish, Italian and French words usually only of foreign borrowings.

The book has a shelfmark of CABS Z7483 ALC. We have another edition (Emblemata ad quae singula, praeter concinnas insciptiones, imagines...) in the Anthony Blunt bequest. This was published in Lyon in 1626. Its shelfmark is BLUNT ALICIATI. The library has a other emblem books, including a copy of Ripa's Iconologia, which is not an emblem book per se, but has similar elements, Jacob Cats's Proteus ofte minne-beelden verandert in sinne-beelden, for an example of a Flemish emblem book, and an 1883 facsimile of Jean Cousin's Liber: Fortunæ centũ emblemata, et symbola centũ, continens..., as well as a number of books about emblem books.

There are numerous emblem projects, so if you are interested:
OpenEmblem Project - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - http://media.library.uiuc.edu/projects/oebp/
Alciato's Book of Emblems - Memorial University at St. John's, Newfoundland - http://www.mun.ca/alciato/index.html
Glasgow University Emblem site - http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/
Alciato at Glasgow - http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/
The English Emblem Project - Penn State University - http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/home.htm
Emblem Project Utrecht - http://emblems.let.uu.nl/index.html

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections

TENDER LOVING REPAIRS

2011-04-14T10:15:00.011+01:00

Some of you may have noticed that there are books on the shelves that have seen better days? Perhaps their covers are torn or the spine has been partially torn off, or maybe it is just a case of the corners becoming so bent and de-laminated that the book pitches forward on the shelf. All this damage is the result of wear and tear, photocopying, pulling them off the shelves by the heads of their spines. These are 'minor' repairs and most libraries don't have the funds to re-bind books unless they are falling apart.

In come students from Camberwell College of Arts, who are studying towards a Foundation Degree in Book Conservation. The 9 students on the course, including Erica one of our part-time Special Collections Librarians, were looking forward to learning some basic conservation. There may be times when they need to do the work themselves or teach others how to make basic repairs. In January we selected 17 books from the main library shelves, not Special Collections, and the Camberwell students have been working on them. Most have required hinges or hollows made of Japanese tissue, which is very strong but light, to re-attach the spines and some have also needed re-enforcing hinges on the inside upper and lower covers, as you can see in the photos.

Ten of the 17 books have been returned now and are either back on the shelves or are awaiting full cataloguing. In some cases they don't look drastically different because the students prioritzed a stable, minimal repair over the aesthetics and restoration.

A few of the books turned out to be much bigger jobs than we had expected and there will be more about them in a future blog post. In the meantime, Erica is going to monitor the books in 6 monthly intervals, to see how the repairs are holding up.

SCONUL access to the University of Glasgow Library

2011-03-31T15:30:00.004+01:00

If you use, or plan to use, Glasgow University Library under the SCONUL scheme please note the following:

For the months of April and May, access to the University of Glasgow Library will be restricted for students from other Universities and Colleges.

Students who show their student card (or SCONUL Reference card) from their home institution to enter the Library, will only be allowed access after 17.00 weekdays and all day at the weekends.

This is in response to feedback from our own students about pressure on study spaces in the Library.

Please note SCONUL members who enrol at our Membership Desk and are given library cards, can come in at anytime as they are full members. The access change only affects those who show their student ID cards to get in.

DON'T DO THIS TO OUR BOOKS

2011-02-12T10:37:00.004Z

Every sticky note label that you put in one of our books leaves a residue. You can clearly see the rectangles in these pictures, where we have removed the labels.

They damage in 2 ways - they can actually accelerate the degradation of some papers. And they leave that residue, which attracts dirt that promotes the growth of mold. So don't do this to our books or we'll feed you to the penguins!

CABS book(s) of the month- February

2011-02-07T09:59:00.012Z

Beginning with the opening line ‘A tear is better than a word’, ‘Das Tränenmeer’ (‘The Sea of tears’) and ‘Dars Wähnen’ (‘The Delusion’) by Dieter Roth are three poetic artists’ books accessible from our CABS collection. The item is classed under two entries in our online catalogue but consists of three volumes, known as bands.
‘Das Tränenmeer’ was published in 1973 and collected together 248 aphorisms, or small one-line poems, which originally appeared from May 1971 in a local advertising bulletin. Band one solely shows these aphorisms, one per page, whilst Band two contain sketches and corrections, and Band three contains sketches, poems and prose. Band three is entitled ‘Dars Wähnen’ (‘The Delusion’) but sub-headed ‘Tränenmeer 3’.

Presented to the library by L. Pedersen in 1988, the books themselves are notable for their sewn pages and illustrations. The book was originally published in editions of 200 per volume. The library’s copy of volume 1 is numbered 108, and volume 2 is number 29.Roth’s Das Wähnen was also presented to the library by Pedersen in 1988, number 21 of another edition of 200 and is signed by the artist opposite the page numbered 262.

Dieter Roth (1930-1988) was a Swiss-German artist, also known as Dieter Rot and Diter Rot. His writing has been described as important as his art, with his poetry inspiring illustrations and so on in a cyclical nature.
As well as artists’ books, Roth was known for his printmaking and sculpture.
Throughout his life he continued to create art in various mediums.

Well known for his artists books’, the library unfortunately (or fortunately, given the tendency food has for rotting) does not hold a copy of the 1972 book Literaturwurst, which consisted of ‘various periodicals chopped up, mixed with lard and spices and stuffed into a sausage casing.’
We do hold a copy of the artists' book "Tentative little recipe" which he produced with a group of students while he was teaching at the Watford School of Art. Other books by and about Dieter Roth can be found on the library’s open shelves.

http://books.google.co.uk/books
Kimmelman, Michael, [obituary] ‘Dieter Roth, Reclusive Artist and Tireless Provocateur, 68’, in New York Times, 10 June, 1998.

Tamsyn Bayliss and Lloyd Roderick
Graduate Trainee Library Assistants

Education Image Gallery: free trial

2011-02-04T11:08:00.013Z

The Book Library has just set up a free trial for an online resource called the Education Image Gallery, which provides access to over 56,000 images, drawn from the following collections:

•The Fitzwilliam Museum
•Getty
•GovEd Communications
•The North Highland College
•PYMCA
•Royal Geographic Society
•University of Brighton
•Imperial War Museum

According to the site, "A large variety of images are included, covering key events and multiple subject areas including history, social sciences, engineering and technology, art, creative industries and geography. With the images selected by by an expert community-led panel, you can illustrate key times, places, people and events. The images are available for downloading in screen-resolution format. As the images are copyright-cleared, they are free to download for (appropriately credited) use in learning, teaching and research."

So, for example, this is an image from the site:

Triptych: The Lamentation, Daniel and St. Peter © The Fitzwilliam Museum.

Members of the Institute can take advantage of this free trial (which ends on 6th March 2011). Please let us know what you think of the resource by emailing me, Phil Bower, at serials@courtauld.ac.uk. The Education Image Gallery can be accessed by following this link and choosing 'login via UK Federation', then 'EDINA (trial only)' from the drop-down list of institutions before then entering your login details. Please email serials@courtauld.ac.uk or ask at the main Book Library desk for the username and password.

CABS BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH - JANUARY

2011-01-11T15:45:00.018Z

It may be our smallest book

L’immortalita e Gloria del pennello : Catalogo delle pitture insigni che stanno esposte al pubblico nella città di Milano (1728) . The original was published in 1671 and, as you can see from the title page of our edition, it is without the main title. It is a mere 11.8 cm x 6.2 cm and may be an abridged version.

It has been difficult to find much information about the book, its authors, or where there are other copies in the world. Some libraries hold a 1980 reprint of the first edition. In Shearjashub Spooner’s book A biographical history of the fine arts being memoirs of the lives and works of eminent painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, from the earlies ages to the present, he says that Agostino (circa 1640-1706) and Giacinto (circa 1620-1688) were the sons of Giacomo Antonio Santagostino, a painter from Milan. His sons were both artists with numerous works executed around Milan.

Nice parchment binding and marbled end papers too!

Spooner, Shearjashub Biographical history of the fine arts. 4th ed., v.II M-Z. New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1867. p.845 Accessed 23 Dec. 2010
http://books.google.de/books?id=Y5of4ZsGayMC&pg=PA845&dq=L%27immortalit%C3%A0+gloria+pennello&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false

Vicky's last day

2010-11-27T14:46:00.004Z

Did you know we hold the Cicognara Library?

2010-11-01T17:58:00.005Z

Conte Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834) was, among other things, an artist, a patron of the arts and an art historian. In addition to his publication Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia sino al secolo di Napoleone, he also amassed an impressive art library, for which he also produced a catalogue Catalogo ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara. This library of approximately 5000 books was so valuable that it was incorporated, in 1824, by Pope Leo XII into the Vatican Library, where it remains today.

The Vatican Library, with support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, has made the library available in microfiche. And we have a copy. Of course it is never fun to look at fiche, but these early printed books are the basis of our studies of art history. And sometimes the reproduction quality can be slightly better on fiche than in digital copies available on the internet.

We also have some of the titles (not the actual books) that were in the count's library in our Special Collections, particularly in the Anthony Blunt bequest. As well, we hold the 2nd edition of the Storia della scultura... published in 1824 at shelfmark CABS B611 and the Ciocognara catalogue published in 1821 at shelfmark CABS Z56. The catalogue was used during the project to catalogue our historical books and the reference is included in our catalogue records where possible. Anyway, if you are interested in early books about art, techniques, aesthetics, etc., please ask at the desk to see the fiche.

Erica Foden-Lenahan

Special Collections Librarian

References:

Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte - www.arthistoricum.net/fr/themenportale/kunstgeschichte/ressourcen-kunstliteratur-digital/leopoldo-cicognara/

Dictionary of Art Historians - www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/cicognaral.htm

WELCOME TO NEW READERS OF THE BOOK LIBRARY BLOG

2010-10-04T09:20:00.002+01:00

Antony Hopkins

Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries

CABS BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH - OCTOBER

2010-09-28T15:41:00.013+01:00

A review in the magazine Nature of Studies in the history and method of science, described Charles Singer’s book as “a notable contribution to certain branches of medical history and evolution.”1 We, in the Book Library, didn’t realize we had the author’s corrections, albeit only for the introduction and the two chapters he contributed to the work. His chief role was as editor of this seminal text.

Our volume was presented by Lord Conway to the library in 1933. It has lived in the Kilfinan Librarian’s office for some time until this summer when it was sent off to binding. Although just a pile of papers at the time we found it, evidence shows that it was, at one time, in a ring binder. Once compared with a couple of copies of the book at Kings College London, we realized that the thin paper and the cut and pasted illustrations were pre-publication versions of the texts; and the extensive annotations were corrections by the author, not overly-pernickety comments by Lord Conway.

Singer was born in 1876 in London and he attended the City of London School, where he distinguished himself as a Latin and Greek scholar. However he chose to study medicine at University College London, eventually graduating with a BSc, with a specialism in zoology. He then took a scholarship to study zoology at Magdalen College, Oxford. He returned to medicine in 1898 and graduated in 1903. He had a long, distinguished career holding several medical posts. He was also a founding member of the History of Medicine section of the Royal Society of Medicine.2

The first volume of Studies in the history and method of science was published in 1917, the second volume which the library does not hold, came out in 1921. Volume 1 includes the results of his investigation of Hildegard of Bingen’s manuscripts. It is likely this chapter which drew Lord Conway to it. However, we have no idea how he came to own this unique and quite special item. This chapter has the name Hugh of St. Victor corrected throughout, as it originally appeared as Hugo de St. Victoire. It also includes his handwritten addition of a note of thanks to a number of colleagues who permitted him access to the manuscripts.

The Wellcome Library holds a lot of correspondence between Singer and his wife Dorothea, who was herself a medieval scholar and who assisted with research and publications throughout his career.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections Librarian

1. Nature 101, 82-83 (04 April 1918)
2. E. Ashworth Underwood. “Obituary: Charles Singer (1876-1960)” Medical history. V.4(4), 353-358 (Oct. 1960). Accessed 28 Sept. 2010 through the National Center for Biotechnology Information http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034567/pdf/medhist00173-0092.pdf
Julia Sheppard. “Charles Joseph Singer, DM, DLitt, DSc, FRCP (1876-1960): papers in the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre.” Medical history. V.31 (4), 466-471 (Oct. 1987). Accessed 28 Sept. 2010 through the National Center for Biotechnology Information http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1139787/pdf/medhist00065-0088.pdf

COURTAULD BOOK(MARK) LIBRARY: KEEP TRACK OF YOUR RESEARCH

2010-09-27T11:33:00.007+01:00

There are a range of social bookmarking sites available online which can help you manage references to electronic resources.

Delicious allows you to keep a log of bookmarked pages which can be accessed from any computer, rather than book- marking pages on individual machines.

To set up, all that is needed is a yahoo account- if you already have this, creating a delicious account takes seconds.

While there is no substitute for old fashioned library research, the recommendations function can be helpful to locate articles and references that you otherwise may have missed. By setting up networks of users, sharing bookmarks could be a useful for preparing for group work or presentations.

Notes can be added to references and more crucially, the bookmarks can be tagged. Such folksonomies are common to anyone already using flickr or youtube, but to gain the best use of this in an organisational context, it may be necessary to control the vocabulary used: bookmarks which may be useful to be shared with others might not be found by other users if idiosyncratic tags are used. There are also options to add a message to the bookmark, which then can be sent via email or twitter to other users; useful if you are feeling generous and find a page that would be useful for a friend’s essay.

Once you have created a list of resources it if possible to find articles and web pages which may be of interest that otherwise might have been missed. Given the size of the network, this can be a little hit or miss- ‘also tagged by….’ Would refer to the whole network and so could be a little nebulous, and while it can be useful to find other references, a more worthwhile approach would be to add specific users to your network (under the ‘People’ tab)- this way different work groups could access each others bookmarks.

Superficially, Delicious would appear to be more useful in a social rather than academic setting. However, by creating a distinct network of users relating to a particular area of work it could be a useful tool to share references. This would be enhanced if used for particular projects or set areas of work, and possibly agreeing on a brief list of tags to be used.

What is citeulike?

CiteULike is a free service to help you to store, organize and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser so there's no need to install any software. Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer with an Internet connection. [from CiteULike.com]

The advantage of CiteULike over delicious is citation management and could be a useful tool in preparing resources for an essay, or as a means for organizing a list of references into a consistent and clear format. For citation help, Zotero is also worth exploring.

To get the best out of the service, you have to be quite aware of some information retrieval techniques which go beyond a simple search-engine search. For example to quickly search for articles which contain a given tag within your library of articles, the tag can be added to the end of the URL of your logged in page, with Boolean operators. While this produces quick results for those familiar with these techniques, it may present a fairly steep learning curve to those who are not.

For help in honing your internet searching skills, Intute has a range of online tutorials offering advice of critically evaluating resources and improving search techniques.

Lloyd Roderick
Graduate Trainee Library Assistant

ASIA HAS MOVED!

2010-07-19T15:24:00.007+01:00

Librarians have not taken over running the world (yet!), however Courtauld librarians, volunteers and students assistants have been hard at work for the last few weeks re-organising exhibition catalogues from Asia. Asia exhibition catalogues have long been a mess, including anomalies such as six different classmarks for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem – which us unhelpful for anyone trying to locate one of these catalogues!

We are pleased to announce that the Asia exhibition catalogues have now been re-classified, re-labelled and re-shelved in an orderly manner. The classmarks for our “new-look Asia” are as follows:

Z5085 – China
Z5086 – India
Z5087 – Israel, Palestinian territories
Z5088 – Japan
Z5089 – Other Asian countries

Over the course of the project we made some interesting discoveries about our collection of Asia catalogues. It was fascinating to see the extent of our collection of Japanese exhibition catalogues, and the variety of towns, cities and venues represented. While assigning class marks to Japanese exhibition venues I was fascinated by the systematic and logical naming of the galleries and museums: I wish all countries would make my life this easy! We also made some worrying discoveries about the geographic knowledge of previous librarians. Bagdad is in India?! Bangkok is a country?! Thankfully, these have all now been rectified!

So, if you are passing the exhibition catalogues we can thoroughly recommend taking a moment to look at our fascinating and orderly collection of Asia catalogues.

Deborah Lee
(Senior Cataloguer)

GRADUATION DAY

2010-07-02T16:08:00.009+01:00

A poem by Sir Robert Witt about the students and the library of The Courtauld.

Our warmest wishes to our 2009/10 students who are graduating on Monday 5 July.

The Book Library

CABS BOOK-OF-THE MONTH - JULY

2010-07-01T15:09:00.011+01:00

Coinciding with the current London exhibition - Treasures of Lambeth Palace Library (17 May-23 July 2010) - July's CABS book-of-the-month is a full-colour fascimile of the Lambeth Apocalypse (manuscript 209 in Lambeth Palace Library).

The Lambeth Apocalypse is a richly-illustrated copy of the text of the Revelation of St John, accompanied by extracts from the commentary of Berengaudus (9th century) on the allegory.

Apocalypses were amongst the most popular manuscripts used by the clergy and laity throughout the Middle-Ages. The Lambeth Apocalypse is one of about 20 apocalypse manuscripts still in existence that were produced in England in the 13th and 14th centuries.

It is believed to have been produced some time in the latter half of the 13th century and though its provenance is debated, one theory is that it was created under the patronage of Lady Eleanor De Quincy, Countess of Winchester, (c.1230 and 1274), presumed to be the kneeling figure beside the Virgin in one of the full-page images in the manuscript.

For a while the Lambeth Apocalypse was in the hands of the Elizabethan book collector, John, Lord Lumley (1534-1609). After his death, his book collection became part of the Royal Library, (which eventually formed the nucleus of the British Library), and it then passed on to become part of the founding collection of the Lambeth Palace Library.

The full-colour facsimile, in our CABS collection, was published in 1990 with an accompanying critical commentary by Nigel Morgan in a limited edition of 550 copies (which can be found on the open shelves at D2897.LAM MOR). Photographs of many of the images from the Apocalypse can also be found in the Conway Library.

As explained in the foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, Robert Runcie, interest in the Lambeth Apocalypse also threatened its preservation. To preserve the original manuscript and to make it available to a wider audience, the Lambeth Librarian, Dr. E. G. W. Bill, decided to have the facsimile made.

If you wish to see the original manuscript along with a range of other archives and manuscripts from Lambeth Palace Library, information on the exhibition can be found here:
http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/treasuresexhibition

Boryana Bojkova
Graduate Trainee

SUMMER IS HERE

2010-06-30T15:28:00.004+01:00

Now that we have waved a teary eyed goodbye to our finishing students, it is a good time to remind you of some of the changes that happen over the summer period.

Any book that is issued or renewed from now on will not be due back until the 4th of October. The lucky students of the Curating the Museum course are now entitled to borrow up to 10 books in preparation for their dissertations. Perhaps now is the time to settle down with all those Nicolas Bourriaud, Bruce Altshuler and Hans Ulrich Obrist books.

Please remember that as of Tomorrow (Thursday the 1st of July) the library operates reduced opening hours of 10.30am – 5.30pm Monday to Friday (no Saturday opening). Also the Book Library will be closed on Monday the 5th of July for the Graduation ceremony and again between Monday the 2nd and Tuesday the 31st of August.

Untitled (Book Sculpture) by Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakke at the Deichman Public Library in Oslo

We hope you all enjoy your summer and spare a thought for the librarians shut away in the basement.

Nicholas Brown
Graduate Trainee

World Cup starting today and we care!

2010-06-11T17:09:00.020+01:00

We’re glad to announce that The Courtauld sweep stake gave Vicky Kontou Cameroon to cheer for (Group E, first game on 14/06 against Japan). And we quite like the following juxtapositions (World Cup – Librarian – Nationality):

Erica Foden-Lenahan got Nigeria (Group B, first game on 12/06 against Argentina), and while Erica’s last day at The Courtauld was 10/06, she’ll surely be keeping in touch as the World Cup progresses, especially as Nigeria’s playing Greece on 17/06..:

Marie Lagerwall admits she’s already given up on her plans to memorise the Serbian national anthem (Group D, first game on 13/06 against Ghana):

And while not all library staff made the sweep stake, including Kilfinan Librarian Antony Hopkins, we’re assuming that his current stay in the USA will see him cheering for that side of the Atlantic (Group C, first game on 12/06 against England!):

As to Peter Wood, we suspect he’ll be supporting Spain (Group H, first game on 16/06 against Switzerland), indeed it’s no secret his very favourite Arsenal player is in the team (though not at Arsenal for much longer it seems!):

Marie Lagerwall, Assistant Librarian (Serials & E-Resources)

GOOD LUCK ERICA

2010-06-08T11:35:00.008+01:00

Erica joined us as Special Collections Librarian in June 2008 having worked in art and museum libraries for over ten years.

In her two years with us she did a tremendous amount of work with our Special Collections (CABS) for which we are extremely grateful.

She re-organised parts of the CABS room to ensure better storage for the books in line with preservation principles. She stabilised the environment in CABS through the use of dehumidifiers and fans and trained staff in preservation principles and the handling of antiquarian books. She introduced the CABS request forms in duplicate that make the reshelving of books easier and more accurate and improve our ability to keep statistics. Over five hundred CABS items were consulted the past nine months.

Erica did a wonderful job with our Portfolio collection. She arranged it and catalogued some volumes so now these are stored in better conditions and can be easily retrieved. Requests for our portfolios have since increased. She coordinated the transfer of the books that belonged to Stella Mary Newton from the History of Dress department and began cataloguing them, work to be continued after she has gone. In addition she created a handlist of material held in the Stella Mary Newton archive so that it can be more easily used by teaching staff and researchers. Also, she liaised with the Gallery Registrar and curators on the long-term loan of bound volumes of prints and the formal transfer of loose prints from the Blunt collection to the Prints & Drawings Department.

She worked tirelessly in promoting our Special Collections. She liaised with student and staff curators to incorporate special collections books into Gallery and Institute exhibitions including the MA Curating exhibition, the sculpture exhibition in the Book Library foyer, the Michelangelo exhibition and a Wyndham Lewis exhibition in Madrid. She created new publicity guides for both special collections and archives and produced newsletters that were circulated internally and externally among international art organisations. She started the Special Collections Book-of-the-Month for this blog and updated our web pages to include more photographs from the collections.

She supervised, trained and coordinated several book library volunteers and our student assistants and therefore various projects were completed and new books were processed and taken out on the shelves promptly.

These are just tiny examples of Erica's achievements and contributions to our Special Collections and to the Book Library in general. She has been a wonderful colleague and a valuable professional. We are sorry that her time with us came to an end but we are happy that she will continue her career in a field that she really likes. Erica will be starting a course in September in book conservation at the Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. We wish her all the best on her new career.

Antony Hopkins
Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries

CABS BOOK-OF-THE MONTH - JUNE

2010-06-01T12:31:00.008+01:00

This item from Special Collections is from the archive collection of Stella Mary Newton and is not a book at all. It is an invoice dated 15 May 1934 when Stella was still Stella Mary Pearce and had her own fashion label. The invoice recipient was the author Dodie Smith (1896-1990), best known for her book The hundred and one dalmations. Smith noted on the invoice that the silver evening dress had been “a great success”.

Smith had been an actress, which may be how she came into contact with Pearce, who often designed costumes for the theatre. In 1934, Smith published the play Touch Wood, which, according to her Oxford DNB entry, was the first to be written under her own name instead of the pseudonym C. L. Anthony.* Her day job was at Heal’s, running the store’s gallery and working as a toy buyer. Her future husband Alec Beesley, the Advertising Manager at Heal’s, gave her as a birthday present, Pongo, a Dalmatian. And so the story began …

Dodie Smith's journals, correspondence and manuscripts are held in the archives at Boston University.

*Valerie Grove. “Dodie Smith”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. URL: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40481. Accessed 10 May 2010.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections Librarian

LATE MAY BANK HOLIDAY

2010-05-25T12:51:00.007+01:00

Please remember...

Monday, 31 May

The Book Library & IT Centre are closed

VIRTUAL TOUR

2010-05-24T12:29:00.011+01:00

Thanks to the hard work of our Web Manager, Eva Bensasson, we are proud to introduce a virtual tour of the Book Library. You can now bask in the glory of the Book Library from the comfort of your own home.

Tour

The site of the library (along with the rest of Somerset House) was begun by William Chambers in 1776 and was incomplete at his death in 1793. It is considered one of the finest buildings of the period in London, blending the neoclassical and Palladian as well as reflecting Chamber’s own Parisian training with extensive Louis XVI style interiors. Chambers’ Treatise on Civil Architecture is available via Google books here, as well as in hard copy in the library.

The east block originally housed the Royal Academy of Arts (of whom Chambers was a founder member and first treasurer) before their move to Burlington House. The arches of the Book Library are believed to have housed their wine cellar.

Other William Chambers buildings of note include the ten storey Pagoda at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew and the fantastically bizarre Dunmore Pineapple (below).

In the summer of 2007 the library was refurbished. The majority of the books were relocated to the basement floor and arranged in a continuous sequence. A ramp was added to ensure that the entire basement floor is wheelchair accessible. In order to provide a more pleasant working environment, ceiling fans were added to improve ventilation, the whole space has been repainted and redecorated, and the brickwork has been sealed. An extra twenty wirelessly networked study spaces were created in order to accommodate increasing numbers of laptop users and seating has been concentrated in daylight areas.

Nicholas Brown
Graduate Trainee

A SHORT POST FROM THE SERIALS LIBRARIAN

2010-05-24T12:07:00.007+01:00

June 10 nearing...

A reminder to all students that the Oxford English Dictionary and Chicago Manual of Style are accessible online, on campus only for the latter and off campus also for the former using Athens authentication. Links from our online resources page.

Hallelujah!

At last, we are pleased to announce that no less than a year on, we have finally received the February, March, April, May AND June 2009 issues of the RIBA Journal. The result of much ‘claiming’ on our part since March last year; we are now hoping this year’s January issue will turn up before long!

Marie Lagerwall
Serials/E-resources

IMPORTANT LOST PROPERTY FOUND IN THE LIBRARY

2010-05-20T12:09:00.005+01:00

This cryptic message was found on top of one of the tables under the main stairs. We have to admit that it really made our day! Thanks to anyone who left it.

We are concerned that someone is stuck somewhere in a sausage, if you can provide any information, please let us know. We should perhaps also mention the Student Union's counselling service.

The kisses make us laugh as well - it makes a sausage sound like an amorous meeting place! Would be nice to find out the whereabouts of this sausage (is it hiding in a corner?) and of the intended recipient, who is presumably wandering around a little forlorn ..!

Or maybe it is an early draft of someone's dissertation.

Please contact Vicky Kontou to claim it as yours, explanations optional (compulsory if you’re looking to have your block waived.)

The Book Library

CURRENT AWARENESS - ARTISTS FILES REVEALED

2010-05-20T10:41:00.010+01:00

What is it?

It is a web-based directory of institutional holdings of artists files compiled by the Art Libraries Society of North America. Researchers can browse the collection statements of various institutions and find links to further institutional resources.

What are "artists files"?

They are anything that is related to a single artist. These could vary from small books and exhibition catalogues to cards, newspaper clippings, press releases, diaries, posters, etc. They provide critical documentation about well established artists, as well as lesser known ones that are not well documented in the literature. Researchers rely on such files to establish chronologies, find out about exhibition dates, review stylistic developments and assess the critical reception of artists over time. Libraries do not always catalogue artists files and therefore these are not found by browsing their online catalogues. Also such collections have regional strengths and therefore are very important repositories for charting communities and exhibiting bodies.

Which libraries participate in the Artists Files Revealed?

At the moment mostly American institutions have collection statements such as the Frick, Guggenheim, Houston, etc.; the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Centre of Architecture are also there as well as the National Portrait Gallery in London. The directory is open to all so I am sure that the list of participators will increase.

Is it easy to use?

The software is basic and very user friendly. At the moment the directory won't allow you to do advanced searches but they say that an upgrade is on its way.

OK, is it really for me?

It is good for researchers who are willing to go a step further and travel to visit other libraries. It will save you from browsing the online catalogues of each library for stuff that may not even be on their online catalogues. And it gives contact details so you can verify if a library has what you are looking for. Some of them offer interlibrary loan service where we could be of some help to you.

How can I access it?

Click here.

Vicky Kontou
Systems & Services

Image: Poster for the "Nameless" exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery, 1921-1922. Held in our Special Collections - CABS Z5055 LON GRO

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS NEWSLETTER

2010-05-11T14:59:00.006+01:00

The latest edition of the Book Library's Special Collections Newsletter is now available. Click on the title of this post to learn more.

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections Librarian

SATURDAY OPENING

2010-05-07T10:39:00.003+01:00

A reminder that the Book Library and IT Centre are open on Saturdays this term and next from 10:00 to 17:00. We're offering a reference service only which means you won't be able to borrow books or use the photocopiers.

Antony Hopkins
Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries

FLYING...PICABIA

2010-04-28T12:17:00.008+01:00

Last week a Francis Picabia exhibition catalogue left the Book Library to travel land and sea to get to – literally - the other side of the world. This book’s journey began all because someone at the University of New South Wales in Sydney requested it as an inter-library loan. Handily this works the other way round as well.

The Courtauld Book Library offers current students and staff a free inter-library loan service: it is a way through which you can get your hands on that illusive item that you can’t find here or at any other library in London. Many libraries in the UK and across the world offer a similar service (sometimes known as document supply) through which books, journal articles and theses are passed around between libraries, helping to make sure the information you need will come to you.

Though sometimes a book will be too fragile, too old or too rare to take the trip, in the majority of cases we’ll help you get what you’re looking for. And though it would of course be nice to take a trip to Germany or Italy to consult materials in beautiful and foreign surroundings, this is rarely practical or affordable. So it is comforting to know that in this particular case the mountain will conveniently come to you.

If you want to know more about how this scheme works, check out our inter-library loans web page.

If you’ve already heard enough and have a book in mind that you just cannot find in London, fill out an inter-library loan request form (to be found by the issue desk) and hand it in to one of the library staff.

Boryana Bojkova
Graduate Trainee
ILL Assistant

SHORT LOANS

2010-04-27T14:09:00.005+01:00

The busiest month for the short loan books was October when these were borrowed 1416 times!

As all students of taught course are aware, this essential library resource is located behind the issue desk. Less obvious however is that the continual addition and deletion of books to and from the collection throught the academic year in response to times of courses beginning or finishing.

There were 455 items in the collection at the end of March, although the number is higher at other times during the academic year. With the beginning of the summer term books have been added to provide for BA students studying Block 9 of the Foundations course, along with texts backing up the revision classes for the 8 previous blocks from this study programme.

Andrew Gifford
Assistant Librarian (Cataloguing/Short Loans)

CABS BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH - MAY

2010-04-27T12:40:00.003+01:00

In honour of the Sotheby’s sale Trésors du Coffre Vollard, the Special Collections Book-of-the-month is Ambroise Vollard’s biography of Paul Cézanne. Vollard was a art dealer, who died in 1939. The sale features works by Derain, Cézanne, and Picasso, among others, that were deposited in a Paris bank vault in 1940. The book, entitled Paul Cézanne, was written by Vollard and published by his imprint in 1914. It came into the Book Library collection through presentation, in 1932, by Samuel Courtauld. It bears Courtauld’s distinctive bookplate, designed by Paul Nash, and is at CABS shelfmark D553.CEZ VOL (oversize).

Erica Foden-Lenahan
Special Collections Librarian

MAY BANK HOLIDAY

2010-04-27T11:29:00.007+01:00

Don't forget that Monday 3 May the Library is closed.

WELCOME TO THE BOOK LIBRARY BLOG

2010-04-26T11:46:00.007+01:00

Welcome to The Courtauld Institute of Art Book Library blog. Here you'll find news from the Library about recent acquisitions as well as tips on how best to use the Library and links to useful Web sites. We'll also post reminders about holiday closures and anything else we think you might find useful or interesting. I hope you enjoy it.

Antony Hopkins
Kilfinan Librarian, Head of Book, Witt and Conway Libraries.

HEY BIG SPENDER...NEW & EXPENSIVE BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY

2010-04-23T16:18:00.014+01:00

In the last month or so the Book Library has acquired two significant complete sets of correspondence.

The first is van Gogh’s. Many of us will have enjoyed the recent exhibition at the RA, despite the crushed toes and strained eyes. We now have a more leisurely opportunity to peruse the 6
volumes that make up the complete letters, including reproductions of the fabulous illustrations.

Shelfmark: D653.GOG GOG

This week we have also acquired the complete correspondence of Dante Gabriele Rossetti. Well, almost complete: we are promised a final volume + index in the autumn. So far it stretches to 8 volumes. No pretty pictures this time but it is a work of great scholarship bringing order out of chaos. The history of its publication (spanning almost a decade) was fraught; even more challenging was the process of collating and editing (the original editor did not live to see it completed).

Rosetti's correspondence currently in cataloguing

Last year saw the arrival in the Library of a facsimile of Leonardo’s “Leicester Codex”, previously known as the Hammer Codex. The original was bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for $30.8mn making it the most expensive book ever sold. Our limited edition facsimile wasn’t quite that pricey but it does have to reside in CABS – so you’ll have to order it up. Have a look though, it’s magnificent.

A couple of years ago, we changed our policy on catalogues raisonnés. We now actively seek to buy them as they come trickling out. Here are some of the artists (some quite obscure, some less so) whose cat rais we have bought in the last year: Munch, Renoir, Puvis de Chavannes, Zurbaran, Caravaggio, Auerbach, Ensor, Rockwell, Ribera, von Motesicky, Merano, Crotti, Vallotton, Baldassari, Bacciccio, Vaccaro.

Munch's complete paintings. Shelfmark: D773.MUN WOL

Peter Wood
Acquisitions Librarian

FINDING IMAGES ON THE INTERNET

2010-04-23T15:02:00.012+01:00

The following is a quick guide to locating good quality images on the web. The first point of call when looking for art historical images is the subscription database ARTstor which can be accessed using your Senate House Library membership (all staff and students of the Courtauld are entitled to register with Senate House).

As well as the extensive content, the main advantage of using ARTstor is that it is a professionally maintained image library; you can trust that, for example, the Mona Lisa won’t be attributed to Michelangelo. Each high resolution image has metadata giving information about the date, material, school and other descriptive details, which allow you to do more powerful searches. The content can be used freely for any educational (non-commercial) activity but can’t be reproduced on an unrestricted website (this blog, for example).

I found 124 images of work by Italian baroque painter Luca Giordano, 33 images relating to contemporary performance artist Orlan and over a thousand images of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mars, Venus and Cupid
Luca Giordano
c. 1670
From Wikimedia Commons (note that a much better quality image is available on ARTstor)

Another excellent resource is Grove Art Online. When viewing any of the scholarly articles you can click on the Images tab at the top of the page. As well as hosting files it also links to verified external sources – normally images from gallery and museum websites. Again these are free to use for educational purposes.

There are many other useful databases such as the Visual Arts Data Service or our own Art and Architecture; for a broad list go to the useful links section of the website and scroll down to Images & Multimedia.

Wikimedia Commons is a file repository for public domain and creative commons images. Creative commons exists to bridge the gap between copyrighted material and the public domain. When using websites such as Wikimedia or Flickr, look for the symbols which let you know the conditions under which an image may be used. Like all wikis the content is user generated and therefore can be unreliable. Just as you wouldn’t rely on Wikipedia as a primary source for research it is inadvisable to assume that Wikimedia will have the same quality control as a peer reviewed scholarly publication. One way of dealing with this difficulty is to check the source of the image; it can often be traced back to a gallery website or intermediary organisations, such as the Web Gallery of Art.

Lastly, we come to the ubiquitous Google. Google allows you to find images relating to almost any imaginable topic, however, as it is not a subject specific database and the content is poorly indexed means that relevant results are often hidden under page after page of soft pornography or pictures of cats. To overcome this you may need to learn how to construct an effective search string (possibly the subject of a future blog post?).

Rembrandt’s Homer Simpson
David Barton
c. 2009
The first result from a Google image search for ‘Rembrandt’
(from Limpfish.com under a Creative Commons license).

Another difficulty is that many images found on the web will be at pitifully low resolution, so you may need to think about how the image will appear when reproduced. The internet is the wild west of copyright, and using images found via Google can generate a host of issues. Also, only a small percentage of the internet is ‘visible’ to search engines such as Google. The Deep Web which is not indexed by such sites includes a wealth of useful databases.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? If you know where an artwork is held try the relevant institution’s website or contact them directly regarding reproduction of images. Sometimes useful results can be found by looking in unusual places. If you’re looking for a portrait try the Dictionary of National Biography online. If you’re looking for images relating to the human body or architecture try the image library of the Wellcome Collection.

Also remember to try our own image libraries and the Slide Library eMuseum which currently has over 30,000 images.

Please remember the importance of checking that you have the necessary copyright permission for your intended use. For example images from a commercial source such as the Bridgeman Art Library will need to be paid for. For a more in-depth guide to finding images and some of the issues involved try this excellent tutorial created by Intute.

Nicholas Brown
Graduate Trainee

FIRE-PROOF BOOK ARRIVES ON EXCHANGE!

2010-04-14T16:58:00.015+01:00

Thanks to our exchange partners at the Belvedere gallery in Vienna, we are preparing to accession an exhibition catalogue with a very special feature – a flame-retardant, fully recyclable textile cover! The catalogue celebrates the work of a group of artists headed by Wiener Musterzimmer, and is clothed in “Returnity”, the world’s first fabric to be made with particularly durable and environmentally friendly properties.

Search our library catalogue by keyword Musterzimmer.
Please note this is a special collections (CABS) item.

More about the pioneering fabric - http://www.returnity.at/
More about the cover artist - http://www.lisaruyter.com/
More about the exhibition - http://www.belvedere.at/

[Image courtesy Lisa Ruyter (© Lisa Ruyter)
and Backhausen Interior Textiles GmbH]

Karen Smith
Exchanges Librarian

ABOUT ART HISTORY

2010-04-14T13:18:00.009+01:00

http://arthistory.about.com/

Take a look at the art history section of About.com. It contains some useful reference information and some advice on writing good art history essays. It also features artist biographies, artistic movements and time periods, as well as job opportunities.

Please let us know if you would like to recommend other free online resources for art history. booklib@courtauld.ac.uk

[Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, 2009]

Karen Smith
Exchanges Librarian

FREE IMMEDIATIONS!

2010-04-13T14:43:00.015+01:00

Feel free to come and take away back issues of Immediations. You will find them on the left hand windowsill, after you pass through the library turnstiles. Other items of free literature can be found in the box on the right-hand side as you exit.

[Image specially created by Howard Hodgkin for Immediations. Title: Language, oil on board, © Howard Hodgkin 2006.]

Karen Smith
Exchanges Librarian

VIVE LES PAMPHLETS LIBRES!!

2010-04-13T11:25:00.010+01:00

The pamphlet collection consists of offprints, copyright-cleared extracts of books and journals and items that are too small or flimsy to be out on the shelves. The online catalogue will say when an item is a Pamphlet. These are now open to all. Please watch our short video to find out more.

Remember that also exhibition pamphlets have collection code 'Pamphlet' but these are not open to browse. We are currently changing their collection code on our system to say 'Exhibition Pamphlet.' If you are looking for a Pamphlet with classmark between Z5020 to Z5098 then you need to fill in the CABS request form.

Vicky Kontou
Assistant Librarian (Systems & Services)