Sustaining Art Research Collections: Case Studies in Collaboration. OCLC Research Report

Art research collections continue to be impacted by the lingering effects of economic uncertainty and the global COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in reduced or stagnant budgets and staffing cuts. These impacts have coincided with a period of institutional reflection and examination of the fundamental role of cultural heritage institutions in society. This report is the second of two documenting the findings from the Operationalizing the Art Research Collective Collection project, which explored collaborative opportunities and models for art research libraries. This report offers qualitative findings from case study research of existing collaborations involving art libraries, while the first report examined how quantitative analysis of library collection and resource sharing data can help identify and inform decisions about collaboration opportunities. Since prospective partnerships can only become reality through the hard work of building and maintaining relationships, it is important to document the practical experiences and lessons learned from real-world collaborations. The selected case studies offer rich perspectives on how art libraries have built and maintained partnerships in a variety of settings to illustrate different partnership models that art libraries could adapt for use in other contexts. [Foreword written by Amelia Nelson. For the first report, "Sustaining Art Research Collections: Using Data to Explore Collaboration. OCLC Research Report," see ED627074. This project was supported through a grant by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.]