Meeting Minutes

Notes of the meeting held at the Courtauld Institute

Present: Sally Bannard (Westminster); Pat Christie (Central Saint Martins/London Institute); Penny Dade (Middlesex); Ruth Dar (UCL); Doug Dodds (National Art Library); Penny Lyndon (Brunel); Francois Quiviger (Warburg Institute); Crispin Partridge (London Metropolitan: North London Campus); Chris Pressler (University of London Library); Sue Price (Courtauld Institute); Cathy Walsh (London Metropolitan: City Campus)

Apologies: Jacqueline Cooke (Goldsmiths); Aubrey Greenwood (Birkbeck); Peter Hassall (RCA); Judith Preece (UEL); Jane Savidge (Kingston); Yoshiko Yasumura (SOAS)

Announcements

Doug Dodds confirmed that he had taken over as Chair of this Group from Suzanne Enright and that Pat Christie would act as Secretary. He briefly outlined the history of the Group since the exploratory meeting of the BL/M25 Arts Mapping Group that was held in May 2001. Since this date the Group had met twice.

1. Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising

Sue Price reported that the Hogarth Project finished in October 2002. The Project was on time and within budget, and had exceeded its targets. Arlis.net has now taken on the role as the 'front-end' of the Project. The Hogarth Project has revealed the potential for more work to be done on retrospective cataloguing in this area.

Pat Christie commented that she had emailed people with details of regional groupings within art and design but she was not aware that the M25 web pages contained such a list.

Doug Dodds has emailed members examples of the terms of reference for some of the M25 working groups plus draft terms of reference for this group - see Agenda Item 3.

Doug Dodds reported that he had received the directory of history collections from Ross Woollard and that this had been helpful to work related to developing the Directory of Art Architecture and Design Resources - see Agenda Item 8.

Pat Christie reported that she had re-circulated the list of possible subject areas and associated Dewey class numbers to cover 'the arts'. She has not received any further comments. She handed out hard copies of the list to the Group.

Pat Christie re-circulated a list of key websites that cover the performing arts. Sally Bannard reported that the BUFVC Researchers Guide: Film, Television and Related Documentation Collections in the UK mapped the genre in terms of content only and so did not duplicate the work this group was discussing.

Doug Dodds has informed the M25 Systems Team about the Group's concerns related to the M25 classification of libraries. Pat Christie will find out how many headings we could suggest for 'the arts'. Action: PC

Doug Dodds has set up web pages for the Group on the M25 site.

2. Chair's report

Doug Dodds attended the afternoon session of the M25 AGM held at Central Saint Martins on 24 January and will attend the Steering Group Meeting in Mid-February. Doug also announced that the M25 Consortium is celebrating its 10th anniversary with an event on 27 February in the new Maughan Library at Kings.

3. Aims and objectives of the Group

Wide-ranging discussion took place on what the role of the Working Group should be and whether this role was already fulfilled by other organisations such as ARLIS/UK & Ireland and by the Creative Arts RDN, ArtIfact and initiatives such as Find It In London and the Artists Papers' Register. It was agreed that Doug Dodds would consult the M25 Steering Group about the Group's concerns. Action: DD

It was agreed that the Group should continue to exist until at least April as it was noted that RSLG proposals will be announced in April. Chris Pressler suggested that one potential role of this Group could be to collaborate on bids for RSLG funding so this will be reviewed once more information is available.

The Group's name and draft terms of reference circulated by Doug Dodds were adopted, with minor amendments.

4. Membership

Deferred.

5. Frequency of Meetings

Deferred.

6. Web pages

These are now available at http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/m25sec/business/arts/creativeartswghome.html

The Group's draft terms of reference will be added. Action: DD

7. Forward plan

Deferred.

8. Arts mapping project

Doug Dodds reported on the progress of the ARLIS Directory of Art, Architecture and Design Resources. The British Library awarded additional funding to the project that needs to be spent by the end of March. This funding has been used to develop the public interface to the directory data. The directory is now part of arlis.net and will be fully online by the end of March. The site has two strands to it - the directory and the union list of serials. It was noted that ARLIS would continue to update the directory data as part of its commitment to produce a printed version. Among other things, the system allows resources to be identified by region, such as London or the South East. Entries indicate the current and past collecting strengths of individual institutions, for English and non-English material, using Dewey as the underlying subject scheme.

A demonstration of the database was well-received by the Group.

9. AOB and date of next meeting

The Group noted its thanks to Sue Price for hosting the meeting.

Date of next meeting to be arranged.

Pat Christie - 06.02.03