PRESERVING WEB-BASED AUCTION CATALOGS

Gretchen Nadasky

M-LEAD-TWO Program

Frick Art Reference Library

Pratt Institute, LIS – 698

Dr. Tula Giannini

Spring 2013

Source: Dorotheum.com

Auction Catalogs

Global Art Market…

•2011 The Global Art Market was $60.8 billion

•Auction House Sales = $30.5 billion. Gallery Sales- $30.3 billion

•Sotheby’s and Christie’s captured 35% of the global auction market •Firms in China captured 42% of the global auction market

• Source: TEFAF

Source: Christies.com

Art is Going On-Line

Expanding the market…Source: Waddingtons.ca

The Internet is Changing Art Scholarship

Annotations provide information

The Frick Art Reference Library

Their collection of 90,000+ catalogs is the

most-requested resource

Source: Frick ArchivesSource: Frick Archives

Miss Frick started the library in 1920

But Collecting is Becoming More Difficult

Auction House Print Status Auction House Print Status Auction House Print Status

Galerie Hassfurther No longer receive Aste di antiquariato Boetto On request Zürichsee Auktionen Discontinued

AB Stockholms Auktionsverket No longer receive Goteborgs Auktionsverk On request Finarte Casa d'Aste Discontinued

Castells & Castells No longer receive Bukowskis On request Auction of illustration On-line only

ALIS Auction House No longer receive James R Bakker On request Nagyházi Galéria With payment

Important American fine art No longer receive Auktion Schneider-Henn On request Farsetti arte With payment

Leonard Joel No longer receive Jeschke Meinke & Hauff On request Hampel With payment

Mü-Terem Galéria No longer receive Lawson's On request Bloomsbury Auctions With payment

Hagelstam No longer receive Hodgins Art Auctions Ltd On request Kieselbach With payment

Auktionshaus Stahl No longer receive Shinwa Art Auction On request

Cheffins Fine art auctioneers No longer receive Schmidt Kunstauktionen On request

Galerie Národní 25 No longer receive Auktionshaus Ineichen On request

Bay East Auctions No longer receive Casa d'aste Babuino On request

Castellana, Subastas de Arte No longer receive

Semenzato Casa d'aste No longer receive

Fernando Duran, Subastas de Arte No longer receive 33 Houses won’t send catalogs or staff must spend time or money to get them

And On-Line Only Auctions are Growing

Valuable information on art sales can be lost

Source: Christies.com

The “Reframing Collections for Digital Age” Project

Seeks to identify how to collect, preserve, and offer digital catalogs using Archive-It

Source: Internet Archive

FARL has 137 websites from catalog subscriptions

Zürichsee Auktionen Galerie Gerda Bassenge Berlin Deutscher and Hackett Finarte Casa d'Aste Ketterer Kunst München Hugo Ruef, Alte und Aste di antiquariato Boetto Drouot Crafoord Auktioner Leo Spik KG Antiquariat Peter Kiefer Andrew Hartley Fine Arts Galerie Hassfurther Auktionshaus Michael Zeller Rossini AB Stockholms Auktionsverket Skinner, Inc Santa Fe Art Auction Castells & Castells Glerum Auctioneers Maître Marc-Arthur Kohn, ALIS Auction House Swann Galleries, Inc Treadway Gallery, Inc Important American Art Kunstauktionshaus Alden DuMouchelles Art GalleriesLeonard Joel James Adam Charlton Hall Galleries, Inc MüTerem Galéria Weschler's Ivey Selkirk Hagelstam Neumeister Uppsala Auktionskammare Auktionshaus Stahl Wiener Kunstauktionen Pierre Bergé & associés Cheffins Fine art auctioneers Bruun Rasmussen Renaud-Giquello Galerie Národní 25 aukcní katalog Dorotheum New Orleans Auction Bay East Auctions Villa Grisebach Heffel Fine ArtFernando Duran, Subastas de Arte Hauswedell & Nolte HeritageAuctioneers Goteborgs Auktionsverk Kunst & Auktionshaus Belvedere, Szalon, Galéria Bukowskis Kunsthallen Reiss & Sohn Castellana, Subastas de Arte Grogan & Company Villás Galéria és Aukciósház James R Bakker, Fischer Luzern Ahrenshooper Auktion SchneiderHenn München Bonhams & Butterfield Brunk Auctions Jeschke Meinke & Hauff, Selkirk's Jefferys Semenzato Casa d'aste Lempertz Blomqvist kunsthandel Lawson's Ketterer Kunst Hamburg MacDougall's Jeschke Greve & Hauff, Spink, London Galerie Widmer AuktionenHodgins Art Auctions Ltd Tajan Whyte's Shinwa Art Auction Wolf's Fine Arts Auctioneers Osenat, Maison de ventes Schmidt Kunstauktionen Dresden Doyle New York Kunstauktionshaus Auktionshaus Ineichen Auktionshaus Schopmann Mallams, Oxford Casa d'aste Babuino Sloans & Kenyon Woolley & Wallis Auction of illustration Susanin's Cowan's Aste di antiquariato Boetto Venduehuis der Notarissen Hobbs Parker De Vuyst Carola van Ham Kahn-Dumousset, Societe Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner AS Ritchie's Auctioneers Morton & Eden Stuttgarter Kunst Dr Fritz Nagel John Moran Meissner Neumann aukcníBonhams Gary Nader F Galerie Koller Joyner Waddington's Skinner, Inc Dr. Jürgen Fischer, Karl & Faber Freeman Fine Arts Auktionshaus Karrenbauer Galerie Gerda Bassenge Berlin Dreweatt Neate James D. Julia, Inc. Ketterer Kunst München Perrin, Royère, Reeman Dansie Auctions Drouot Subastas Galerías Quinn's Antiquariat Peter Kiefer Cottone Auctions Mullock's Auktionshaus Michael Zeller Amberes Veilingen Alcalá Subastas Nagyházi Galéria Hampel Kunstauktionen Farsetti arte, Casa d'aste Bloomsbury Auctions

This Phase is to Prioritize…

Auction websites are in multiple languages

Auction website technology varies

Auction Websites use:

• HTML

• pdf files

• Flip books using Flash

Most Catalogs are not Being Preserved by Internet Archive

Redirects

to c

urrent s

ite

Accessable/In

comple

te

Catalo

gs not a

rchiv

ed

Accessable

Broken li

nk

HTML C

atalo

gs do n

ot load

No cata

logs a

vailable

Technical p

roble

m

Webpage b

lockd b

y robots

.txt

password

pro

tecte

d

Website

not c

apture

d

Catalo

gs blo

cked by ro

bots.tx

t

51

30

20

5 6 4 6 5 3 3 3 1

Catalog Results from Auction House Websites in the Wayback Machine

Few on-line catalogs are archived in the Wayback Machine

Archive-It Pilot at FARLMonthly Crawl Report

Auction sites are very large. The crawl runs out of time before it can capture all of the pages.

Source: Archive-It

Archive-It Pilot at FARLMonthly Crawl Report

The Scope of the crawl may be adjusted if the software doesn’t recognize a desired URL.

Source: Archive-It

Archive-It Pilot at FARLMonthly Crawl Report

Source: Archive-It

Website owners can prevent their site from being crawled using robots.txt

Some Sites are Archive-Friendly…

An example of Lawson’s catalog information that has been archived

But the Challenge is Complete Capture

A page from Lawson’s catalog that has not been archived

Conclusions

The perfect digital preservation system does not exist. It may someday, but I don’t expect to live to see it. – Bill LeFurgy, LOC May 3, 2013

•Art auction catalogs are a foundational text for art research. On-line versions have value in art scholarship and should be preserved.

•The variety of form and location of digital auction catalogs increase the complexity of collection, preservation and access.

•Web-harvesting programs like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine are not systematically capturing auction catalogs

•Web-crawling technology is effective at capturing web pages but less so documents posted to the web

•Web preservation is not automated. Criteria for prioritization must be established.*

* The priority list developed for FARL based on this report is confidential.

Resources

Corbett, Rachel. (nd). How big is the global art market? Artnet Magazine [website] Accessed from http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/china-the-worlds-top-art-and-antique-market.asp

Christie’s. (2011). Hong Kong Fall Auction, 2011. Christie’s.com. http://www.christies.com/features/auctions/1111/hong-kong-fall-auctions-en/images/results_press.jpg. April 30, 2013.

Christie’s. (2013). The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor. On-line Only Auction. http://www.christies.com/elizabethtaylor/saleroom_onlineonly.aspx. Acessed: May 3, 2013.

Frick Archives. http://www.frick.org/collection/frick_art_reference_library

Le Furgy, Bill. (May 3, 2013). Picturing perpetual beta for digital preservation. The Signal Digital Preservation. [blog] Library of Congress. Accessed: May 5, 2013.