February 1994 BULLETIN ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS Registered Charity No. 282579 Editor: Jannet King, 48 Stafford Road, Brighton BNI 5PF For information on advertising & membership: Kate Woodhead, Dog and Partridge House, Bxley, Cheshire CWW 9NJ Tel: 0606 835517 Fax: 0606 834799 CHAIR'S REPORT During the autumn the Officers and the put more pressure on Vice-Chancellors for potential sponsors to the Director of Executive Committee of the Association and on the Funding Council itself to have Publicity and Administration. have taken up a number of issues of interest the system amended. Benefactors - Change your terms of to the membership. membership to become a Benefactor. Art History Departments' E-Mail We have also received the excellent Art History Teaching in Scottish Network news that the Association will no longer be Universities The Association wishes to establish an E- charged VAT on subscriptions and other The Scottish Higher Education Funding Mail network to keep colleagues working business. This will save us substantial Council is about to embark upon a Quality in Art History departments across the amounts every year. Many congratulations Assessment Programme for Humanities country more closely in touch with one and thanks to Peter Crocker for his patient subjects in the academic year 1995-96. another. E-mail addresses to the Chair negotiations with HM Customs & Excise. The Association has written to the Director please. 1994 Bookfair: It is vital to the of Teaching and Learning making a case Association's finances that this event is a for Art History to be assessed separately Review of the Academic Year success. Please do all you can to encourage from History and he has agreed to take The Association has been asked to comment publishers to take stands. careful note of our arguments when the on the Flowers Report, recently published, detailed programme content for each funded which lays out the arguments for and against National Art Slide Library subject group is worked out. a general move from terms to semesters. The NASL has now relocated from the The Executive Committee has discussed V&A to De Montfort University, Leicester. 1992 Research Selectivity Exercise: this once but would welcome the view of De Montfort will soon publish its plan for The Aftermath the membership. The current EC view is the future operation of the library. First Members of the Association will remember that maximum priority should be given to results suggest that a postal service will be the dismay which greeted the funding the preservation of research time but that perfectly reliable and that there is allocation in the aftermath of the 1992 other aspects of the report are beyond our considerable interest in purchasing as well Research Selectivity Exercise operated by remit. as borrowing slides. They have identified the Higher Education Funding Council for almost 200,000 usable slides and over England and Wales. Having complained The Association's Finances 36,000 of these have now been recorded on vigorously to the Chairman of the HEFCE, Once again, we have been discussing the a database. the Association has now written to all Art need to raise the Association's income. Local access points are to be established History departments pointing out that the Here are some helpful, easy steps that up and down the country to act as referral HEFCE simply overlooked the substantial every member could take: points to the NASL, the first to be at numbers of new departments coming into Subscriptions - Pay promptly and Finsbury Library, Islington. All these the reckoning with the end of the binary encourage colleagues to join the AAH. developments require funding. The re• divide. The Association wants every Art Advertising Revenue - Persuade your launch is scheduled for mid-January 1994. History department to explain how it was publishers to advertise in Art History. Through the good offices of Will affected by the application of the unfair Sponsorship - Many of the Association's Vaughan and his working party, the HEFCE formula and we are preparing to activities"could be sponsored. Send ideas Association is still doing what it can to NEWS REPORTS support the establishment in London of a done to encourage a new attitude and how extent to which non-European or non- permanent satellite collection of the N ASL. things might be changed. Some see the Western material is presently included. challenge to the old canon as the next great Meanwhile any information or opinions to The Art History of the World frontier for the discipline in this country. the Chair please. The EC has started serious discussions on In due course we shall be seeking more the Eurocentric character of British Art precise information about the kinds of Art Nigel Llewellyn History and on what, if anything, should be History taught across the country and the December 1993 SLIDE LIBRARIES: THE COPYRIGHT LAW An Important Development Since the passing of the Copyright Act in have a slide library licensed. The licence of world rights and the plight of freelancers the late 1980s, many members of the will be granted in exchange for an annual with small private collections. DACS is Association will be aware of the dilemma fee and DACS will disperse monies to preparing to issue licence application forms afflicting those who use slide libraries which those copyright holders who apply to it. in spring 1994 and members keen to know hold stocks of slides made from books. The holding of a licence will insure the more should write to: Such images are illegal but no-one has licence holder against prosecution under Janet Ibbotson come up with a scheme whereby the the terms of the Act. Design and Artists' Copyright Society making, storing and using of such slides Initially, 'start-up' licences (in fact, St Mary's Clergy House could be legalised and the holders and indemnification against claims) will be 2 Whitchurch Lane users insured against prosecution. granted retrospectively to allow existing London El 7QR The Executive Committee has decided collections of slides to be maintained. Tel: 071 247 1650 to use the pages of the Bulletin to draw the Applicants will count their present holdings Fax: 071 377 5855. attention of the membership to a licensing of 'illegal' slides and will pay a fee banded Meanwhile, without grudging proper scheme which claims to solve these according to the size of the collection. remuneration to the copyright holders on problems. The Executive does not endorse Some AAH members may take this the slides we use for teaching many of us the scheme but seeks only to publicise it as opportunity to discard those old, pink will be wondering where our institutions a service to individual members who may stalwarts. Latest estimates suggest such are going to find these extra funds. Please own or be responsible for slides which may 'start-up' fees could range from £500 for do not write to me for more information infringe copyright. smaller collections to £2,500 maximum about the DACS scheme. On behalf of the AAH, in late October I for the largest collection. attended a meeting of an advisory group Thereafter, and in addition to the 'start• Nigel Llewellyn representing the Library Association, the up' licence, DACS will issue 'annual' Chair Institute of Information Scientists, ARLIS licences based on a combination of a flat December 1993 and the ASLIB AV Group. The meeting fee (latest estimates put this element at was called by the Design and Artists' £500 p.a.) and a "per slide copy charge' of Copyright Society (DACS), who are about about 25 pence. The combination of these to become licensees under the terms of the two elements respect DACS' view that Copyright Act. All the professional there is no standard or typical slide library. librarians present on the Working Group Members may recall that the AAH were agreed that a voluntary licensing sought legal opinion on the Copyright Act scheme was essential. It was noted that with regard to slide libraries. It may be many institutions had prohibited copying worth noting that the lawyer we used then, altogether, that some collections were lying Robin Fry, now acts for DACS and supports dormant and unused while educationalists the licensing scheme they are trying to were desperate for teaching material. establish. On behalf of the Association I DACS will establish a scheme whereby have written to DACS raising certain an institution or an individual may apply to important questions, including the issues 2 CONFERENCE REPORT COMPUTING THE PAST Managing Information in Museums, Galleries and Archives 9th Annual Conference of CHArt Victoria and Albert Museum 17-18 December 1993 For nearly a decade now, CHArt (the due for publication next spring. Finally, funding by a consortium of Dutch, British Computers and History of Art group) has Mike Budd - of the Science Museum and Irish partners - is to find ways of been holding an annual conference in which Library -considered the findings of LASSI linking different databases which deal with some aspect of the application of computers (no dog jokes please, he pleaded at the art cataloguing and to provide standards to the study and conservation of works of beginning of his talk - without much effect). for the exchange of information. The art is explored. This year the focus was on The Larger Scale Systems Initiative (to achievements of the project so far were the ways in which information technology give it its full title) is being operated by a described by members from the Witt has been transforming the activities of consortium of museums which covers both Library - John Sunderland and Colum museums, galleries and archives. Talks arts and science subjects.