Venice Biennale: on the shelves and in the systems of the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts

The Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts hold over 138 000 titles. They use SBN, the National catalogue system (here is an IFLA conference paper on this library system), and have implemented various call number tweaks. Collection is organised by field (art, film theatre etc) and by name. Identifiers like T (theatre) and S (storia/history) are on the spines. Titles are also arranged by dimensions: over and under 100 pages, then by spine size. Here is a slightly clumsy Google translation to English about ASAC Biennale's (the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts) directives, databases and etc:

"ASACdati is a data base for the unified management of all the information on funds held by the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts Foundation La Biennale di Venezia, and all the activities and events planned by the Foundation from 1895 to the present. Has as its objectives the visibility and accessibility of the collections, continually increasing, and their management and archival organisation, in addition to the collection of news about the Biennale and its manifestations .

ASACdati, as part of the reorganisation of the Archives, was launched in late 2004, in collaboration with 3DEverywhere srl, a spin -off of the Laboratory of Multimedia Technology and Telecommunications Department of Information Engineering (DEI) of the University of Padua, which was conducted through analysis of the different types of data relating to funds, documents and information managed by ASAC.

Emerged from this study are similarities, differences and connections that bear witness to the great variety of objects and data collected. The strong interrelationship between the different funds and events, a characteristic that has always represented the added value of the Biennial and ASAC, has determined so the realisation of a peculiar and rich data base. It may make countless examples of these interrelationships , dates mainly from the fact that the same subjects have had in years had different functions.

The data base management plans made ​​and then the interaction of all funds ASAC and many other bibliographic, cataloging, administrative, historical, scientific and technical related to the world of the Biennale and the arts.

To date [projects] have been carried out cards - along the lines ICCD - for the management of Art Collection; Fund Posters, Foteteca ; Mediatheque; also tabs to manage information about all the events organized by the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia : Architecture Visual Arts, Cinema, Dance, Music, Theatre . It was thus possible to start the work of inventorying, cataloging and partial digital reproduction of the different documents."

Personally, I prefer my databases "rich and peculiar".

As a non-lending library they aren't stuck with a regular stocktake, but do stocktake their rare collections. Which are impressive. Over 2000 biennale artworks are included dating back to 1895, as well a sizeable collection of photographs documenting the events. Film resources are stored off site on Marghera, on the mainland across from Venice

in a specially controlled facility.

dOCUMENTA Archive and Research Library: classifications and organisations

 Hubertus Gassner was director here at the dOCUMENTA Archive and Research Library for several years from 1989. Gassner is now director at the prestigious Kunsthalle in Hamburg.
Gassner, another art historian, is responsible for shaping the library and archive into its current model.

What was really interesting was the history of the development of the Library's unique classification system, through the various hands and minds of the Library's managers.

Classification system of the dOCUMENTA Archive and Research Library

It seems Dewey and LC never got a foothold in the specialised collections of Germany: certainly not the ones I have visited. The Kassel School of Art and the Bauhaus Archiv also have developed their own systems.

The monographs on artists remain in alphabetical arrangement.
A systematic subject division was devised by a director of the collection in the early eighties.

This was born a shelving arrangement with no operational catalogue.
In 1987 a formal catalogue was developed, and a digital library management system implemented in 1990. All acquisitions post 1990 are included in this LMS which exists now as Alephino a Aleph/ExLibis product.

A major retro cataloguing project has just received funding and a big green light, so tens of thousands of older titles will soon be incorporated into the catalogue proper. Very exciting!

Titles like this one. Early and rare catalogues of German and international artists are plentiful here on these shelves in the Kulturhaus. There is a huge amount of material like this in the collection that can  now be properly accessioned. The grant was received from a German scientific fund and will wage a  cataloguing team for 2 years.

Kunsthochschulbibliothek: bespoke classification system

The Kunsthochschulbibliothek uses its own specialised classification system. No LC or Dewey here.
In fact, each of the 10 branch libraries of the University of Kassel have their own unique system.
There are no plans to unify the classification- with over one million titles university wide, Ute physically shuddered at the mere suggestion of the project.
It must be working just fine. In place for over fifty years, the art school collection of 55,000 monographs, 2500 DVDs and 95 hardcopy periodical subscriptions is in perfect working order.