Sunday, November 14, 2004

Site Profile: ARTstor This site is described in the Nov. 12 issue of the LearningTimes Network (http://home.learningtimes.net): "ARTstor is a non-profit initiative, 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." The images are searchable and browseable; orient to the site by starting with the Tour. "ARTstor provides curated collections of art images and associated data for noncommercial and scholarly, non-profit educational use. The ARTstor Charter Collection (available starting July 2004 on a site-licensed basis to non-profit institutions in the United States) will initially be comprised of approximately 300,000 digital images and associated catalog data; the tools to make active use of those images; and a restricted environment that seeks to balance the interests and needs of users with those of content providers." The site places emphasis on the educational tools to use the images as well as the collection: " In order for digital images to be integrated into the fabric of teaching, learning, and research, many individuals and institutions will need tools for searching and using the collections – and the tools must be comparatively easy to use. For example, ARTstor's software will allow faculty to teach with digital images and students to review images related to a course. ARTstor users will be able to create and save image groups, and they will have tools that allow them to zoom in on details of images, as well as to use their own images along with those in the ARTstor collections." One example of the richness of the collection is the Art History Survey Collection, "This 'survey collection' has been defined on the basis of an 'overlap concordance' based on 13 standard art history survey texts, some consulted in multiple editions. It is intended to include at least one image of every art object or monument reproduced in at least two of these standard survey texts. It thus represents an experiment in defining empirically a 'consensus collection' supporting widespread teaching needs, but one that does not yoke the teacher or student to any one particular text, pedagogical approach, or 'canon.' " ARTstor should be of value to instructors in many fields including Art, Humanities, and History. Unfortunately ARTstor is not an open access repository; access to the images and the software in ARTstor is based upon the payment of a one-time participation fee and an annual fee--the fee is scaled according the size/type of participating institution. 9:14:02 AM    COMMENT []