From the press release:
Brill and the Frick Collection have signed an agreement to digitize c. 3,300 historical art sales catalogues from the Frick Art Reference Library for Brill’s publication Art Sales Catalogues 1600-1900 Online (ASCO).
The Frick Art Reference Library is one of the largest repositories of auction catalogs and provenance information in North America. Its collection consists of more than 90,000 catalogs, with an annual acquisitions rate of 1,500. Catalogues from more than 1,000 auction houses in Europe, Australia, and the Americas, ranging in date from the eighteenth century to the present, are represented in the collection.
Brill’s Art Sales Catalogues Online (ASCO) database, originating from the IDC imprint and now containing almost 30,000 sales catalogues from the period 1600 to 1900, will be supplemented by catalogues from the Frick library. A selection of c. 3,300 historical catalogues, not yet available in the existing database, will be added in yearly batches in the coming 5 years. These supplements will enrich the database with many unique and rare items. This not only makes these valuable texts available to a larger community of scholars, it also helps to preserve these catalogues.
The first installment of c. 700 catalogues is expected at the end of 2012/early 2013.
More information: Liesbeth Hugenholtz, email: hugenholtz@brill.nl, phone: + 31 71 5353484, http://brill.nl/asco
