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New on-line digital library of world art
(Thursday 19 August 2004)
Compiled by Emily Ridge
Art History lecturers and professors from around
the globe will be excited to learn of recent digital developments
which threaten the survival of the slide as the primary art-history
teaching aid. ARTstor, brainchild of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
holds approximately 300,000 images of art, architecture and archeology
and is set to become an essential resource not alone in universities
but also in institutions such as museums and libraries.
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A sample from the digital library:
Paul Gauguin, French (1848 - 1903) Self-Portrait,
1889 Oil on wood 79.2 x 51.3 cm. (31 1ò4î x 20 1ò4î). Image
held here.
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As a non-profit organisation, ARTstor aims to
make digital images widely available for individual as well as
scholarly and curatorial use:
ARTstor recognises the
important role played by independent scholars in the arts and
humanities. While we currently only make ARTstor available to
non-profit institutions, our licensing agreements include provision
for ARTstor use by 'walk-in' users at subscribing libraries
where licensing institutions support such access to on-line
library resources.
ARTstor aspires to become a sort of 'public
utility' or service in which each and every individual will have
easy access to a work of art.
It is in the classroom and the lecture theatre,
however, where ARTstor will have the most marked effect. New software
enables lecturers to pan across and to zoom in and out of images.
In addition, the time taken to assemble the images required for
a lecture is greatly diminished. Images can be retrieved and analysed
at the touch of a few buttons. This is a far cry from the tedious
and time-consuming process of putting together a set of slides.
This development is just one of many examples
of the powerful influence of technology on our day to day lives,
as remarked by the Executive director of ARTstor, James Shulman:
The impact of digitization
on teaching and scholarship becomes increasingly clear everyday.
ARTstor is working with museums, colleges, universities, libraries,
archives and others around the world in an effort to ensure
that these dramatic changes happen in thoughtful ways.
Andrew W. Mellon has invested over $30 million
to the project in order for these 'dramatic changes' to have a
positive effect on everybody not solely certain sectors of society.
ARTstor is currently accessible only in the
United States but will be launched internationally at a later
date.
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Do you have an opinion on this news item? If so, please click
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| Responses so far |
| Comment 1 |
This reads like a glorified press release. In academia,
there are a lot of people who feel like ARTstor isn't going
to solve the problems of access the way they claim.
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