Groundbreaking Partnership Unites Decades of Research.

MOST people associate museums with art and artifacts, not research libraries. But many of New York's most prestigious museums have extensive collections of books and papers. Four of them -- the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection -- have combined forces to share resources, save money and make their holdings more accessible to the public. Together these institutions make up the New York Art Resources Consortium, an integrated library system formed in 2007 that is supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its Web site, nyarc.org, just went on line in February. Last year, three of the museums united their collections in one catalog, called Arcade (the Met has kept its catalog separate). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]