. art libraries , journal 3713 2012 Does a decade make a difference? Comparing the web presence of North American art museum libraries and archives in 1999 and 2011 Heidi N. Abbey T he number of North American art museums with a presence on the internet has more than doubled since 1999. This is not surprising given the power of new media to transform the experiences that museum visitors have with our cultural institutions. Every year museums attract thousands of visitors to view, both in person and online, their specialized collections and unique exhibitions. Developing in tandem with these resources and largely unfamiliar to the general, museum-going public, the libraries and archives of these institutions have contributed to the research mission, educational programming, documentary history, and curatorial functions of museums in countless ways. In addition, especially for art historians and other scholars, museum libraries and archives have been and continue to be increasingly valuable for primary and secondary sources, including artists' correspondence, diaries, sketches, hard-to-find monographs, exhibition records and sales catalogues. What is unclear, however, is the extent to which resources in art museum libraries and archives are being documented, preserved and made accessible online. This research is perhaps the first of its kind to evaluate, on a small scale and during a span of twelve years, the web presence of 22 North American art museum libraries and archives. 1 Introduction In May 1998, the ARCH (Art Restoration for Cultural Heritage) Foundation sponsored a symposium entitled 'Virtual Museums on the Internet' at which Thomas Krens, the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, made the following observations about art museums in the digital age: On the verge of the 21st century art museums are facing a new set of challenges and tasks that derive from recent developments in technology. The digitization of information, innovations in the fields of reproduction and simulation, the establishment of multimedia as one of the prime forms of artistic expression and the Internet constitute only a few elements in a new and rapidly evolving technological environment that art museums must now face. 2 Certainly Krens' conclusions are as relevant today as they were in the late 1990s. Technology has dramatically changed the daily landscape of issues for museum professionals not only in North American art organizations, but also in cultural institutions worldwide. Art museums are creating interactive websites, communicating with users via blogs, 34