The major museums of the United States were founded in the late-19th/early 20th century with a desire to educate the community and libraries were an important feature of these new institutions. The services provided include selecting all materials and contributing their cataloging to a national bibliographic database. Collaborative programs, many sponsored by the Research Libraries Group, have brought collective power to museum libraries and fostered cooperative preservation, acquisition, and cataloging projects. All major museums are run by professional librarians with a masters in library science and often graduate work in art history. Museum librarians are increasingly involved in the automation of information about the art collections of the institutions.

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In the 1980's the course taught at Sinmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science focused exclusively on the literature of art and the management of art libraries. The course has been expanded to include:
Generation, management and dissemination of art information in art libraries, visual collections, and museums. Examination of art historical methodology and impact of new technologies on research; challenges of developing collections with unique format materials; developments in cooperative art preservation projects for printed and visual materials; inter relatedness of automated documentation projects in libraries, archives, visual collections, and museums.
Students are assigned topics to research for presentation in a class seminar. Each student undertakes an internship of 60 hours to provide experience in a library, museum, or art related institution. The education of art librarians is a process of life long learning. Professional organizations, professional literature, and conferences all assist art librarians in networking with colleagues and in remaining current on new developments within the field throughout their careers.

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In March, 1995, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo cordially invited Ms. Nancy S. Allen, Director of Information Resources of Museum Fine of Arts, Boston to Tokyo and she gave two open lectures. One was entitled "The Role and Function of Libraries in Art Museums" and the other was "Educating Art Librarians", which was based on her educational career at Simmons College, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In the former lecture, she discribed how the library developed and achieved the effective functions in two hundred years'　history of the museum. Just before writing her texts of the lectures, she was appointed as Director of Information Resources of the museum. In her lecture, she talked about her new tasks on the development of a museum-wide, automated collections information management system for objects. In the latter lecture, the audience was intensely impressed that she recognized her students as the future colleagues of art librarians and understood how she lead them to acquire the practical manners of real works in art librarianship and art documentation. Today both in Japanese museums and libraries, the needs for development of art librarianship/art documentation is becoming tangible, Ms. Allen's lectures based on her rich experiences have significant meanings for us. Members of JADS and the author sincerely thank Ms. Allen for her kindness, especially for preparing the excellent texts in her new tasks as Director of Information Resources.

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The Art Library of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum started in 1976 as the first open-style library in art museums of Japan. In 1995, the Library moved in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and re-opened to the public with the facilities of an art information center. The lecturer, a librarian working there since 1976, summarizes the history and the activities of the Library during the 20 years. And she discourses on the computer system of the new Library, especially on the artist authorities file and its control. At the end of the article, she stressed the need of sharing art databases in art museums off Japan and expects its realization in next 20 years.

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The vector space model is used for pictorial images retrieval by indexing terms to and is compared with the Boolean logic technique. Pictorial image database contains 212 pictures and these pictures are indexed by Leung's PDL (Pictorial Description Language) which is used three facets (object, characteristic, relationship). The results of retrieval experiments reveal that the performance of the vector space model technique is higher than Boolean logic technique.

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Pittsburgh is rich in art. This is evidenced by the existence of the Frick Fine Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Th ese institutions were built with endowments from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and his financier, Henry Clay Frick, although the city has transformed its industrial base from steel to high-tech. The Henry Clay Frick Fine Art Library at the University of Pittsburgh is also one of the legacies of the Frick family and is a world renowned art history library. Though the collection emphasizes Medieval and Renaissance work, the library holds everything from the classics through 20th century works in various formats such as books, folios, and CD-ROMs. Electronic resources are also accessible from its PC's which have improved graphical display capabilities. The East Asian Library of the University collects mainly vernacular language materials. Japanese collection development has focused on modern and contemporary Japanese art. Cataloging records are input in the OCLC CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) Plus system. Bibliographic records are then transferred to the local OPAC, which is accessible on the Internet from any part of the world. The two libraries are also cooperating in developing collections and services with two other local libraries: Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. It is a challenging time for libraries and librarians who have to keep up with changing technologies while continues to provide services and access to classic material. In this way we can become a bridge between the treasures of the past and the scholarship of the future.

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