Culture Chronicle

A Biblio-File Brouhaha
The Wall Street Journal - April 20, 2010
By Lee Rosenbaum

Today (Tuesday, April 20), an international conclave of art scholars, librarians and art-history devotees is gathering at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to discuss a pressing, if esoteric, scholarly crisis--the future of art bibliography. The discussion promises to be more stimulating and feisty than this bookish topic suggests.

The urgency of the meeting, convened by the Getty Research Institute and sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, stems from the institute's recent withdrawal of financial support for one of its programs, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). This searchable database summarizes periodicals, books and other bibliographies in about 45 languages, focusing on European and American visual art. It is the most trusted and second most used (slightly behind JSTOR) resource of its kind, according to respondents to the Getty's own 2008 user survey. But it fell victim to the budgetary crisis besetting most cultural institutions during the economic downturn.

Thomas Gaehtgens, the research institute's director since late 2007, is hoping that his decision to cut off funds for this venerable resource may yet prove to be a blessing in disguise. He envisions a new model--libraries and research institutes from around the world joining their existing research databases to "create a new world-wide network in bibliography." But for now, a research compendium painstakingly built and enriched for almost 38 years has been seriously undermined. Since December 2009, there have been no updates. For the full article, click here