Computers in art librarianship: the standards that support them

Art librarianship is at a critical point in time when information technology is making a greater than ever impact on the services it provides. Standards play an important part in computerized systems and different standards are needed to make both existing and future applications work efficiently and economically. These standards include cataloguing rules and exchange formats, available now, and standards for retrieving information from databases and for the storage and retrieval of images which are in various stages of development at present. The librarian needs to be aware of the standards that are in use and are being proposed for the future.