With apologies for any cross-posting.

V&A AWARDED £1 MILLION GRANT BY HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND

The V&A's National Art Library (http://www.nal.vam.ac.uk/) has been
awarded a grant of nearly £1 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund,
enabling the V&A to create the world's largest database dedicated to art

and design literature.

On completion of the five year project, researchers working anywhere in
the world will have free access via the Internet to more than a million
records listing the National Art Library's holdings.

This is the first stage in a process which will eventually enable the
new framework to offer access to the full text of items in the library's

collections, such as Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, original manuscripts

of the novels of Charles Dickens, illuminated manuscripts dating back as

early as the 15th century, and many other rare books, manuscripts and
archives.

This is the largest grant to date (exact value £958,400) made by the
Heritage Lottery Fund for a library cataloguing project: an important
aspect for the Fund was the fact that the database will contribute to
the conservation of the material by avoiding excessive handling of
fragile items.

National Art Library records currently take the form of a variety of
indexes and catalogues, most of which are only available in the Library
itself and are complicated to use.

The total cost of the project is £1.77 million, all of which has now
been raised. The necessary matching funding is being provided by the V&A

itself, plus various other organisations and individuals in the UK and
abroad. The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, for example, is providing
funds for the conversion of the records for auction house sale
catalogues, whilst the Getty Information Institute
(http://www.gii.getty.edu/) is providing a contribution in kind.

The National Art Library dates back to 1837 and is a department of the
V&A. It is the premier library in the UK for the documentation of the
history of art, craft and design, and contains over two million items.
When the Project is completed in 2002, it will be possible to say with
certainty exactly what the Library holds, for the first time since the
earliest days of the Museum.

Jan van der Wateren, Chief Librarian, said: "This is a major project
that will bring some of the greatest treasures of the Library to a wider

audience. Without funding of this sort, it would simply not have been
practicable, and the scholarly community is indebted to the Heritage
Lottery Fund for their help."

The Director of the V&A, Dr Alan Borg, said: "I am delighted that the
pre-eminence of the National Art Library has been recognised in this
way. With the generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the V&A
will be able to maintain its leading role in the documentation and study

of art and design."

The NAL's World Wide Web address is: http://www.nal.vam.ac.uk/

FURTHER INFORMATION

The older catalogues, handlists, indexes and registers covered by the
Project include a handlist of exhibition catalogues 1890-1986, a
catalogue of auction house sale catalogues, the Library's manuscripts
catalogue, older subject indexes, an index to children's books, the
annual registers listing the V&A's own archival files and a number of
catalogues of special collections such as the Forster and Dyce
Collections.

A project manager and three other staff will be appointed in the first
year. Since some of the work can only be undertaken in-house, the number

of people directly employed will rise to seven in subsequent years.
Other categories of material will be dealt with by external agencies on
the library's behalf, and will be subject to appropriate tendering
procedures.

The Library has been a member of OCLC since 1987, and joined the
Research Libraries Group (RLG) at the beginning of 1997. The bulk of the

records will be created in USMARC format.  However, the National Art
Library intends to make use of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format

for some categories of material, including the V&A's own archives. The
library will also be using the Getty Information Institute's Art and
Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) as a prime source of subject indexing
terminology.

Further information will be made available on the NAL's World Wide Web
site as the project proceeds. The WWW address of the page describing
the Project is http://www.nal.vam.ac.uk/projects/heritage.html

FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT:

Jan van der Wateren,
Chief Librarian,
National Art Library
Victoria and Albert Museum
LONDON SW7 2RL
Tel: 0171 938 8303
Fax: 0171 938 8275
Email: [log in to unmask]

OR

Douglas Dodds
Head of Collection Management
National Art Library
Victoria and Albert Museum
London SW7 2RL
Tel: 0171 938 8470
Fax: 0171 938 8461
Email: [log in to unmask]

OR

Tracy Williamson,
Head Of Media Relations
Victoria and Albert Museum
Tel: 0171 938 8361
Fax: 0171 938 8341










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