1. PRESERVING WEB-BASED
AUCTION CATALOGS
Gretchen Nadasky
New York Archives
Conference Conference
June 7, 2013
Source: Dorotheum.com

2. Auction Catalogs

3. 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

4. Art is Going On-Line
Expanding the market…
Source: Waddingtons.ca

5. The Internet is Changing Art Scholarship
Annotations provide information

6. 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

7. But Collecting is Becoming More Difficult
Auction House Print Status Auction House Print Status Auction House Print Status
Galerie Hassfurther No longer receive AstediantiquariatoBoetto On request Zürichsee Auktionen Discontinued
AB Stockholms Auktionsverket No longer receive GoteborgsAuktionsverk 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

8. And On-Line Only Auctions are Growing
Valuable information on art sales can
be lost
Source: Christies.com

9. The InternetArchive
The Internet Archive preserves web pages and act as a
digital repository
Source: Internet Archive

10. Archive-It – Heritrix Web-Crawling
247 organizations now use Archive-It to preserve their
websites and give users access to retired sites
Source: Internet Archive

11. The “Reframing Collections for DigitalAge” Project
Seeks to identify how to collect, preserve, and offer digital
catalogs using Archive-It
Source: Internet Archive

12. 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 Galleries
Leonard 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 Art
Fernando 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 Auktionen
Hodgins 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 aukcní
Bonhams 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…

13. Auction websites are in multiple
languages

14. Auction website technology varies
Auction Websites use:
• HTML
• pdf files
• Flip books using Flash

15. Most Catalogs are not Being Preserved
by Internet Archive
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

16. Archive-It Pilot at FARL
Monthly Crawl Report
Auction sites are very large. The crawl runs out
of time before it can capture all of the pages.
Source: Archive-It

17. Archive-It Pilot at FARL
Monthly Crawl Report
The Scope of the crawl may be adjusted if the
software doesn’t recognize a desired URL.
Source: Archive-It

18. Archive-It Pilot at FARL
Monthly Crawl Report
Source: Archive-It
Website owners can prevent their site
from being crawled using robots.txt

19. Some Sites are Archive-Friendly…
An example of Lawson’s
catalog information that
has been archived

20. But the Challenge is Complete Capture
A page from Lawson’s catalog
that has not been archived

21. 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.

22. 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.