UD digitizing the Paul R. Jones Collection

“Portrait of Paul R. Jones” by Clarissa Sligh

4:33 p.m., Feb. 18, 2005--UD has been digitizing the Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art to make it available to students and educators at historically black colleges and universities.

At a Feb. 15 gathering of Wilmington Rotary Club members in Mechanical Hall, home of the Paul R. Jones Collection, UD President David Roselle made a presentation introducing the web-based technology that takes the digitized images of the art and then makes it available for study.

“We are working on sharing the collection with other art schools, beginning with Spelman College in Atlanta. What we are building is a digital archive combined with written information about the artist and the work. The technology is being developed at the University of Virginia,” Roselle said.

On a screen behind Roselle, vivid prints were called up one after the other. Then, stopping on one print, one spot was selected and the computer zoomed in so that every detail of the artist’s work was magnified.

“If the item is three-dimensional, you can spin it to see all sides,” Roselle said. He said audio can be synchronized to coincide with different works.

A sampling of digital images from the Paul R. Jones Collection is available at [www.museums.udel.edu/jones/jones-pages/digital-jones.html].

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