The Getty Conservation Institute and ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) have commenced a two-year collaboration that will considerably strengthen AATA Online, the major bibliographic reference tool produced by the GCI in association with The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Through this initiative, launched in October 2004, a significant selection of the holdings of the ICCROM Library will be abstracted for inclusion in AATA Online. The library contains the world's most extensive collection of resources on every aspect of heritage conservation in a wide variety of languages. There are currently more than 86,000 references registered in the collection.

The GCI-ICCROM project will focus on conservation literature in geographic and subject areas that are not yet comprehensively covered in AATA Online. Geographic areas that will now receive greater coverage include eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Scandinavia. Among the subject areas that will now get increased attention are ethnographic materials, photographs and film, modern materials, natural history, values and economics, and tourism.

Beyond expanding the international scope of AATA Online's coverage, the GCI–ICCROM collaboration will encourage increased access and use of the ICCROM Library. Conservators will be able to search a substantial portion of ICCROM's collection within the context of the many thousands of other bibliographic references and abstracts already found in AATA Online. By abstracting materials that are then made physically available to researchers through their library, ICCROM is strengthening its mission to broadly disseminate its expertise and information resources to conservation professionals working around the globe.

AATA Online: Abstracts of International Conservation Literature (www.aata.getty.edu) is a free online database of over 100,000 abstracts of literature related to the preservation and conservation of material cultural heritage. The database is updated quarterly with new abstracts of both current and historical literature.

For more information, please contact the GCI at aata@getty.edu or ICCROM at library@iccrom.org .