Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Library joins the OCLC Research Library Partnership

The William Morris Hunt Memorial Library at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston joins the OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP) as a Partner.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Library comprises the William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, eight curatorial department libraries, and the Center for Netherlandish Art Library. As the intellectual hub in support of all research activities occurring in the institution, the library's primary mission is to meet the research needs of the museum staff by evaluating, selecting, acquiring, organizing, and providing access to its collection. While the library’s primary audience is the museum staff, it also extends its service and access to the general public and scholarly community seeking art research resources.

The combined library holdings total more than 400,000 items, including 60,000 auction catalogs and over 150,000 serials and ephemera. The library collection reflects the strength of the Museum’s encyclopedic collections and supports research on the Museum’s permanent collections, special exhibitions, and general art history.

“It is a pleasure to rejoin the Research Library Partnership,” said Hee Jung Lee, Director of Libraries for the Museum of Fine Arts. “With our recent relocation and offsite storage solutions, our rejoining the RLP network is important for empowering our users with greater access to resources through this collaborative resource sharing community.”

The OCLC Research Library Partnership supports focused programming and research in four areas crucial to research libraries:

  • Research support
  • Unique and distinctive collections
  • Resource sharing
  • Next generation metadata

Across these four areas, the RLP seeks to support libraries through the challenges of COVID-19 and to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. The RLP currently comprises 125 Partner institutions around the world.

Visit oc.lc/rlp to learn more about the OCLC Research Library Partnership