Born-Digital Auction Catalogs

Art auction sales catalogs represent a primary source for various types of information relating to art and artists, including provenance, or the recorded history of the ownership of an artwork through time. Establishing provenance is critical in determining the authenticity and rightful legal ownership of an artwork and may also be used to gather a better understanding of an object’s cultural significance and value. Currently, the Ingalls Library holds nearly 105,000 auction catalogs from sales the world over, dating from the mid-18th century to the present.

As the global art market continues to shift online, print auction catalogs have been disappearing in favor of more cost-effective and environmentally friendly digital counterparts. Even revered houses such as Christie’s, Bonhams, and Sotheby’s have quietly eliminated print catalog subscriptions, now only providing copies as souvenirs of blockbuster sales or small-batch distributions to specialists. This presents a unique challenge to the libraries that collect them. Unlike print media that can still be used in its original format after centuries, web-based digital information could be permanently lost in just a few years without proper maintenance. To avert a “digital dark age” in future art history and provenance research, the Ingalls Library has teamed up with art libraries at institutions around the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, to collect these unique digital objects and ensure that the information they contain is available for generations to come.

Art museum libraries have long recognized the usefulness of collaborative efforts where collecting interests overlap, and auction catalogs are no exception. Beginning in 1982, the Ingalls Library partnered with the libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Met to develop a database known as SCIPIO (Sales Catalog Index Project Input Online), which unified early online records of art auction catalogs held in the collections of member institutions. Through the years, this joint project has expanded its membership to 25 fine arts organizations around the world, now with a shared catalog of more than 570,000 records for sales dating from the 16th century to the present. 

Today, SCIPIO has brought library professionals together once again to develop and share a set of skills, standards, and an infrastructure for collecting, cataloging, and preserving digital auction catalogs, rising to the challenges of format obsolescence, data degradation, and copyright restrictions. Before capture, permission must be obtained from the auction houses themselves. Then staff at SCIPIO-member institutions may create digital copies of online catalogs or lot lists designed for long-term preservation and accessibility. Digital copies are cataloged and added to the SCIPIO database by librarians, where they become publicly discoverable and accessible in the library’s online catalog. Through this valuable collaboration, the Ingalls Library begins a new chapter in its long history, ensuring future access to digital heritage and continuing its legacy of leadership in providing researchers with new forms of analysis.