The art of finding an illustration - or just Google it!

Uppsala University Library is one of the few libraries in Sweden that can offer many valuable and rare special collections. The special collections include early printed books, manuscripts, pictures, maps and music scores. The library curates a large and valuable collection of pictures including water colours, drawings, engravings, lithographic prints and photographs. This material is only partially registered, but there are special sections and staff who can help the individual scholar to find relevant pictures. Illustrations in books and manuscripts’ pictures are usually more deeply buried than the collections kept in drawers, but questions about pictures are often put to the staff who manage the picture collections, irrespective of where the pictures might be found. The time consuming search for pictures has made it important to find ways to make the found images retrievable. The Library has therefore decided to prioritise the cataloguing and digitisation of those pictures that our readers order copies of. The collections at the Uppsala University Library are also a part of the Swedish cultural heritage and should therefore be accessible for the whole population. Since Google searching is the commonest way of finding information on the internet, it should be easy to find pictures that way too. Cataloguing every picture individually would take an inordinate amount of time, so Uppsala University Library has chosen to create a single bibliographic record for all the pictures in a manuscript or book.