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Art and architectural scholars have long relied on a set of discipline-based bibliographic resources to support their research. In recent years, the dissolution of some of these resources coupled with shifts in research interest have prompted leaders in the field to redefine what is meant by a disciplinary bibliography and to seek an innovative approach for creating a flexible future domain-based bibliography of research literature in all its traditional and emergent forms. Librarians, scholars, publishers, and information technologists have gathered to participate in an international community-driven initiative that envisions a global approach to an ever-evolving definition of what is meant by "bibliography" and, as a practical matter, to form the Future of Art Bibliography (FAB) Initiative. The goal has been to develop a better understanding of current bibliographic and research challenges and to envision proactively a new collective roadmap for supporting art historical research going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1950, the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University acquired a copy of Vitruvius's treatise on architecture in the French translation of Jean Martin, published by Jêrome de Marnef and Guillaume Cavellat in Paris in 1572. This copy features copious editorial and marginal annotations in at least two early hands, as well as a contemporary, eight-page (four-leaf) manuscript bound in at the back, also copiously annotated. The annotations show that this copy was used as the basis for a later edition of the Martin Vitruvius, published by the firm of Jean de Tournes (Geneva, 1618). The bound-in manuscript proves to be a French translation of Guillaume Philander's "Digressio Utilissimo" on the classical orders, from his Annotationes to Vitruvius (first edition, Rome 1544). This unrecorded manuscript translation of Philander's important commentary on the orders furnished the text that de Tournes incorporated in the 1618 edition of Vitruvius. Avery's copy of the Martin Vitruvius of 1572, in addition to offering rare firsthand evidence of editorial and printing practices in the early seventeenth century, further provides concrete and exhaustive evidence of the editorial strategies employed by a publisher of architectural books intent upon filling the perceived market for an illustrated, scholarly--yet accessible--edition of Vitruvius in the vernacular. (152-157) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a project at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of the Columbia University in New York for the development of a computerized catalog of its architectural drawings incorporating a graphic data element through the use of a videodisc. The project is being funded by the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Background on the Avery Library and its services is included. Other formats of bibliographic information on documents include films, phonorecords and musical scores.