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Art and design in Brighton goes live


* 19 September 2002 *

Art and design in Brighton goes live

Hidden away in the libraries, museums and universities of Brighton and Hove are more than 120,000 books, journals and archives dedicated to art and design. Yet these amazing resources, stored all over the city, have often gone unnoticed by the general public, artists and academics. A new project, hopes to enable everyone to discover these buried treasures.

The ADBiB (Art and Design Books in Brighton) website will be launched on 26 September at a ceremony in the newly opened Brighton Museum. In one place - www.adbib.ac.uk - it pulls together details of the many and varied art and design resources all over the city. Web users can search by topic and see an example of the work housed in each collection.

Project manager, Mary Dixon, says ADBiB allows users not only to find collections but also to make connections across them: "Take the Festival of Britain: the Design Council archive at Brighton University allows you to see the history of its design and formation, while the University of Sussex's Mass-Observation Archive lets you understand the social reaction to the project."

Other featured collections at the University of Sussex include the Barlow Gallery of Chinese ceramics and the archive of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies.

Some of the more intriguing collections include the Vokins Archive, relating to the world of a now defunct Brighton department store; and a collection of toys from the 19th century at Hove Library.

"There are 53 separate collections in Brighton"says Mary, "from beer bottles to street furniture. The ADBiB website allows you to search through them all easily."

ADBiB was funded by the Research Support Libraries Programmes, which has distributed public money for programmes aimed at making research easier at Britain's libraries and special collections. The Universities of Sussex and Brighton were partners in the project, together with Brighton and Hove City Council and the Regency Town House.




* Notes for editors *

Press Office contacts:
Benedict Brook or Alison Field,
University of Sussex,
Tel. 01273 678888,
Fax 01273 877456,
B.J.Brook@sussex.ac.uk
A.Field@sussex.ac.uk

 

ADBiB launches on 26 September from 6.30 â?" 8.30 pm in the Brighton Museum.You are invited to send a reporter and/or photographer. For press tickets please contact the University of Sussex Press Office.

Images of the website, ADBiB logo, and of an historic Brighton landscape are available upon request from the University of Sussex Press Office.




* Useful links *

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