Artstor images
University Library provides access to new Artstor image hosting services
2:19 p.m., May 5, 2014--The University of Delaware Library is offering access to two new Artstor image hosting services that make it possible for UD faculty and staff to provide online access to their own image collections, regardless of the discipline.
Using the “Artstor Commons,” UD faculty and staff can provide global access to their own images, unlimited to anyone on a worldwide basis if they so desire.
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Using the “Artstor Digital Library,” faculty and staff can provide limited access to their own images available only to UD if they so desire.
Collections do not have to be art-related and submissions from all disciplines are encouraged.
Artstor
Artstor is a non-profit corporation founded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching, and learning in the arts and associated fields.
Artstor provides access to the Artstor Digital Library, a repository of 1.6 million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities and sciences.
An important component of the Artstor Digital Library is the capability to actively host locally-created image collections coupled with a restricted-usage environment that seeks to balance the rights of content providers with the needs and interests of content users.
Artstor Commons includes the same capability as the Artstor Digital Library and also provides open access to the image collections contained therein.
Hosting images in Artstor Digital Library, Artstor Commons
Faculty and staff who want to host their image collections either in the Artstor Digital Library or in Artstor Commons will use the web-based Artstor Shared Shelf media management software that enables institutions and individuals to manage, store, use, and publish their media collections within their institution or publicly on the web.
Key features of the software include cataloging tools with customizable metadata schemas, workspace tools to support active use of visual content such as search, browse, zoom, image groups, mobile flashcards, and batch download to PowerPoint, as well as remote storage and back up of files.
University of Delaware Library staff can provide technical assistance and support throughout the submission process, with the requirement that of collections must already be in a digital format.
Submissions require the prior written approval of the UD academic chair, school director or research center director.
While there are annual fees charged by Artstor for the hosting of image collections, these annual fees associated with image hosting within Artstor will be supported by the library.
Participation
Interested UD faculty and staff who want to participate in the Artstor image hosting service should contact Mary Durio, head of the Center for Digital Collections, 831-0196, or Gregg Silvis, associate university librarian for Information Technology and Digital Initiatives, 831-4219.
Library staff will meet to assess and review project needs and discuss the next steps to include collections in the Artstor Digital Library or Artstor Commons.
“In collaborating with University of Delaware faculty and staff in these new image hosting services, the library will be greatly improving access to important digital image collections across the University,” said Silvis.
Susan Brynteson, vice provost and May Morris University Librarian, commented, “The University of Delaware Library was proudly one of the first subscribers of and collaborators with Artstor. The submission and provision of electronic access to digital images via Artstor served a national need in an economical manner.”
Examples of UD collections already in Artstor Digital Library
Several units on campus have already worked closely with library staff as early adopters of Artstor hosting.
The Visual Resources Center, under the leadership of Derek Churchill, director of visual resources in the Department of Art History, provides access to over 75,000 images that illustrate the full scope of the history of art and architecture from prehistoric times to the present. The images encompass both Western and non-Western cultures, and the images include both traditional art forms and new media.
“Access to high-quality images is vital to our success in art history, and Artstor’s Shared Shelf makes it easy. Our faculty and students especially like having a single place to go to find both our local University of Delaware image collections and the extensive holdings of the Artstor Digital Library,” said Churchill.
The University Museums, under the leadership of director Janis Tomlinson, includes both the University Museums Art Collection as well as the African American Art Collection, both of which are housed in the Artstor Digital Library.
The University Museums art collections encompass objects acquired by the University from 1917, when it received a gift of Elizabeth Pennewill Brown Leach's iconic Delaware Awake!, to the present day.
Encompassing works of Western art from antiquity to the 21st century, the collection is particularly strong in 20th century art of the U.S. (photography, drawings, prints, paintings and sculpture), pre-Columbian ceramics and Inuit art.
The growing African American Art Collection is founded on the 2004 gift to the University by the Alabama-born and Atlanta-based collector Paul R. Jones (1928-2010).
In addition to the Paul R. Jones collection, with strengths in contemporary art by artists from the Northern, Southern and Mid-Atlantic regions, the African American art collection at UD includes a survey of prints received as a gift from the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia; photographs by P.H. Polk, and works by Wilmington artist Edward L. Loper, Sr. (1916-2011).
Recent additions include work by Felrath Hines, Floyd Coleman, Peter Williams and the Nigerian-American artist Fatimah Tuggar.
“The ability to provide controlled campus access to digital images of selected works within the University Museum collections is a great benefit to all University of Delaware faculty and students,” said Tomlinson.