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Kyffin Williams online: creating a digital resource for an art collection at the National Library of Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Gareth Lloyd Roderick*
Affiliation:
National Library of Wales, Penglais Road, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3BU, UK
*
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Abstract

When Sir Kyffin Williams, RA died in 2006 he bequeathed a large section of his estate to the National Library of Wales (NLW) – an institution with which the artist, most known for his landscape paintings of north-west Wales, had a long association. Combined with material already in the NLW’s collections, there are now over 200 works in oil, over 1200 works on paper and a comprehensive archive held at Aberystwyth. The collection’s presence in a library rather than museum or gallery raises questions of how the work can be displayed or exhibited. In this essay I will give some background to this collection and the wider art holdings of the National Library of Wales before discussing how geo-spatial approaches are being used to display this collection digitally. This work is being completed as a collaborative Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) PhD project between Aberystwyth University School of Art and the National Library of Wales. KESS is part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) through the European Union’s Convergence Programme (West Wales and the Valleys) administered by the Welsh Government.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2014

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