HOGARTH

The aim of the project has been to facilitate research access to major exhibition and sales catalogue collections in History of Art in the UK. The project comprises 13 higher education libraries.

Primarily the HOGARTH Project consists of "retrospective conversion", a process common to all academic libraries as they switch from the old card catalogues to online computer catalogues. It consists of converting catalogue records that only exist in the form of card catalogues into computer records. As a direct result of "retroconversion" researchers will no longer have to travel to an individual library in order to search that library's card catalogue manually. Instead the complete holdings of exhibition and sales catalogues of the libraries involved in the project will be accessible via the internet.

While HOGARTH is not intended to produce a separate database of these newly created computer records the secondary aim of the project is to create a web gateway that will act like a directory to UK libraries with collections in Art History. This online directory will provide a description of library collections, access details and links to library OPACs (Online Public Access Catalogues) allowing researchers to judge which collections in the UK most suit their research and then search their catalogues.