Founded by a wife-and-husband team in 1964, Mary Evans Picture Library embodies a passion for antiquarian books and prints. Managing director Paul Brown says that this expertise in historic imagery is why the London-based agency was chosen to represent, manage and house an important source of 19^th- and 20^th-century imagery, The Illustrated London News Picture Library.

Illustrated London News Limited, the new owner of the 160-year-old publishing company and picture library, just completed a management buyout from Sea Containers. A number of picture libraries and private investors has been interested in acquiring either or both the publishing business and image archive.

"Because we were up for sale, we were very aware of the market and who did what," said Lisa Barnard, the managing director of ILNL. "Mary Evans was a natural fit also because we already had a relationship." When Mary Evans approached ILNL with a proposal, having Luci Gosling on staff afforded the picture library an in-depth knowledge of the newspaper's collection. Gosling had previously spent three years as manager of the ILN Picture Library.

Brown said another factor working in Mary Evans' favor was that "we wanted to keep the collection together and retain the brand." In addition to the world's first illustrated newspaper, the ILN Picture Library includes eight other titles: The Graphic, The Sphere, The Sketch, The Bystander, The Tatler, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Illustrated War News and Britannia and Eve. "The [collection] is a great part of British heritage, and it would be a shame to see it split up and simply become content in another library," he said.

Brown expects that ILN's art deco and fashion images will be popular with Mary Evans' creative clients. On the editorial side, the library's strength is in historic events and personalities, as well as good coverage of the war years.

Portions of the ILN collection are already available at the Mary Evans' Web site. Customers can search both the entire Mary Evans' library or restrict the results to ILN images, more of which are being digitized daily.