The ARIAH-RIHA Professional Exchange Fellowship: first-hand perceptions of photo archives in London art libraries

In the spring of 2017 I was fortunate enough to receive the ARIAH-RIHA Professional Exchange Fellowship that allowed me to travel to London and conduct research there for a month. While in London I looked closely at the collections, services, and clientele of several important art libraries in London but the main focus of my investigation was the photo archive collections that make up a part of many of these art libraries. The photo archives in my own institution at the Yale Center for British Art and our efforts toward digitisation, discovery, and open access made my close examination of similar collections in London particularly relevant – I wished to see how these libraries approached similar challenges and if these institutions share a common understanding of photo archives.