Editing Victoria and Albert Museum (section)

===Books===
The museum houses the [[National Art Library]], a public library<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/prints_books/books/index.html |title=Book Collections&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum |publisher=vam.ac.uk |date=21 October 2010 |access-date=21 August 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100506074922/http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/prints_books/books/index.html |archive-date=6 May 2010 }}</ref> containing over 750,000 books, photographs, drawings, paintings, and prints. It is one of the world's largest libraries dedicated to the study of fine and decorative arts. The library covers all areas and periods of the museum's collections with special collections covering [[illuminated manuscript]]s, rare books and artists' letters and archives.

The library consists of three large public rooms, with around a hundred individual study desks. These are the West Room, Centre Room and Reading Room. The centre room contains 'special collection material'.

[[File:Leonardo da vinci, taccuino forster III, 1490 ca. 01.JPG|thumb|Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Forster III, 1490–1505 (Room 64)]]
One of the great treasures in the library is the Codex Forster, one of [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s note books. The Codex consists of three parchment-bound manuscripts, Forster I, Forster II, and Forster III,<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.vandaimages.com/results.asp?cat1=Leonardo+da+Vinci&X8=2-33 | title = Stock photo and image search by V&A Images | publisher = VandAimages.com | access-date = 21 August 2011 }}</ref> quite small in size, dated between 1490 and 1505. Their contents include a large collection of sketches and references to the equestrian sculpture commissioned by the Duke of Milan [[Ludovico Sforza]] to commemorate his father [[Francesco Sforza]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks · V&A |url=https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks |access-date=2024-10-05 |website=Victoria and Albert Museum |language=en}}</ref> These were bequeathed with over 18,000 books to the museum in 1876 by [[John Forster (biographer)|John Forster]].<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/national-art-library-forster-collection/ | title = Forster Collection&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum | publisher = vam.ac.uk | date = 14 August 2011 | access-date = 21 August 2011 }}</ref> The Reverend [[Alexander Dyce]]<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/national-art-library-dyce-collection/ | title = Dyce Collection&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum | publisher = vam.ac.uk | date = 14 August 2011 | access-date = 21 August 2011 }}</ref> was another benefactor of the library, leaving over 14,000 books to the museum in 1869. Amongst the books he collected are early editions in Greek and Latin of the poets and playwrights [[Aeschylus]], [[Aristotle]], [[Homer]], [[Livy]], [[Ovid]], [[Pindar]], [[Sophocles]] and [[Virgil]]. More recent authors include [[Giovanni Boccaccio]], [[Dante]], [[Jean Racine|Racine]], [[Rabelais]] and [[Molière]].

Writers whose papers are in the library are as diverse as [[Charles Dickens]] (that includes the manuscripts of most of his novels) and [[Beatrix Potter]] (with the greatest collection of her original manuscripts in the world).<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.vam.ac.uk/people/b/beatrix-potter/ | title = Beatrix Potter Collections&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum | publisher = vam.ac.uk | access-date = 21 August 2011 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110811181209/http://www.vam.ac.uk/people/b/beatrix-potter/ | archive-date = 11 August 2011 | df = dmy-all }}</ref> Illuminated manuscripts in the library dating from the 12th to 16th centuries include: a leaf from the [[Eadwine Psalter]], [[Canterbury]]; Pocket [[Book of Hours]], [[Reims]]; [[Missal]] from the [[Basilica of St Denis|Royal Abbey of Saint Denis]], Paris; the [[Simon Marmion]] Book of Hours, [[Bruges]]; 1524 Charter illuminated by [[Lucas Horenbout]], London; the Armagnac manuscript of the trial and rehabilitation of [[Joan of Arc]], [[Rouen]].<ref>Watson, Rowan, ''Illuminated Manuscripts and Their Makers'', 2003.</ref> also the Victorian period is represented by William Morris.

The National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum collection catalogue used to be kept in different formats including printed exhibit catalogues, and card catalogues. A computer system called MODES cataloguing system was used from the 1980s to the 1990s, but those electronic files were not available to the library users.  All of the archival material at the National Art Library is using Encoded Archival Description (EAD).  The Victoria and Albert Museum has a computer system but most of the items in the collection, unless those were newly accessioned into the collection, probably do not show up in the computer system.  There is a feature on the Victoria and Albert Museum website called "Search the Collections," but not everything is listed there.<ref name=dodds />

The National Art Library also includes a collection of comics and comic art. Notable parts of the collection include the [[Krazy Kat]] Arkive, comprising 4,200 comics, and the Rakoff Collection, comprising 17,000 pieces collected by the writer and editor Ian Rakoff.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Comics in the National Art Library|url = http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/national-art-library-comics-and-comic-art-collection/|website = www.vam.ac.uk|access-date = 19 October 2015|author1=Victoria and Albert Museum |author2=Online Museum |author3=Web Team |date = 25 September 2012}}</ref>

The Victoria and Albert Museum's Word and Image Department was under the same pressure being felt in archives around the world, to digitise their collection.  A large scale digitisation project began in 2007 in that department. That project was entitled the Factory Project to reference [[Andy Warhol]] and to create a factory to completely digitise the collection.  The first step of the Factory Project was to take photographs using digital cameras.  The Word and Image Department had a collection of old photos but they were in black and white and in variant conditions, so new photos were shot.  Those new photographs will be accessible to researchers to the Victoria and Albert Museum web-site.  15,000 images were taken during the first year of the Factory Project, including drawings, watercolors, computer-generated art, photographs, posters, and woodcuts.  The second step of the Factory Project is to catalogue everything. The third step of the Factory Project is to audit the collection.  All of those items which were photographed and catalogued, must be audited to make sure everything listed as being in the collection was physically found during the creation of the Factory Project.  The fourth goal of the Factory Project is conservation, which means performing some basic preventable procedures to those items in the department.  There is a "Search the Collections" feature on the Victoria and Albert web-site.  The main impetus behind the large-scale digitisation project called the Factory Project was to list more items in the collections in those computer databases.<ref name=dodds>{{cite journal|last=Dodds|first=D.|author2=Ravilious, E. |title=The Factory Project: digitisation at the Victoria and Albert Museum|journal=Art Libraries Journal|year=2009|volume=34|issue=2|pages=10–16|doi=10.1017/S0307472200015820|s2cid=114843233}}</ref>
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File:BLW Manuscript Book of Hours, about 1480-90.jpg|BLW Manuscript Book of Hours, about 1480–1490
File:BLW Qur'an.jpg|BLW Qur'an
</gallery>