Developments in access to art information : EnCompass digital portal

Recent digital developments have dramatically improved access to art information internationally, providing a wealth of resources to people across the world. At the University of Auckland this has impacted teaching methods and the way students and staff are trained in research methods and use of resources. Now that so many useful digital collections and web based resources have been established, what software solutions can we hope to find that will make searching this vast goldmine easy and productive? Many digital resources are hidden in the ‘invisible web’ so cannot be retrieved using search engines like Google. This article examines the current way the University of Auckland Library provides access to digital resources, and how this may change in the future with the latest developments in software ‘portal type’ solutions.