The PHAROS online search platform is now open and free to use by researchers of all types. The online portal at artresearch.net has been developed using ResearchSpace software and funded through grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and the Samuel H. Kress Foundations. This initial version of the portal includes the holdings of seven Pharos institutions, numbering over 2.8 million images. In the coming months, additional PHAROS members will add their holdings to the online portal, bringing the number of images represented to over 25 million.

Like most librarians, when I have a research question, I go to the databases to search the literature for comparable questions and possible solutions. The onslaught of COVID-19 and its impact on libraries (let alone every other aspect of life) has thrown librarians for a loop and disrupted all our standard modes of enquiry. In a matter of days in the spring of 2020, librarians went from business as usual to locking the doors behind us and trying to figure out how to run a Zoom research support session from the dining room table.

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.

In the libraries of the Yale Center for British Art and the Kimbell Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn created spaces and atmospheres that are particularly conducive to reading about and viewing art. In these rooms, natural light combines with sympathetic materials and forms a timeless dance with thought and contemplation. This paper focusses on the unique library carrels which form the physical bridge between light and dark, inside and outside, and constitute a microcosm of Kahn's thoughts about reading, libraries and museums.

What does it mean to work in a Modernist masterpiece? How is a ‘humanist’ space used? The author’s personal perspective on the architectural elements of the Reference Library at the Yale Center for British Art illuminates the humanistic aspects of Louis I. Kahn’s design. He focusses specifically on the material surfaces of white oak, wool, formed concrete, and their interplay with natural light in the library. Architectural elements such as the wood library carrels, concrete pillars, and exterior and interior windows of the library are considered in relation both to Kahn’s perceptions of a library and to his use of these elements in the museum as a whole.