Archive Raiders: Photographing Library and Archive Materials

Not long ago I was asked by someone if the VRC has a scanner that could be borrowed for a research trip, in order to scan materials in an archive. I do not have much experience photographing works housed in special collections or archives, but I do know that hauling a scanner around is likely not the best solution. Anyone who has tried to photograph archival materials knows that consistently sharp focus with a hand held camera is next to impossible. So what's a scholar to do when he or she needs to document materials but the facilities might charge too much for their photography services and provide no self-serve copy stands?

Konrad M. Lawson has authored a guest post over at ProfHacker in which he outlines his solution to this problem. With just a few relatively inexpensive components he bought on Amazon, he has come up with a clever set-up that is very portable and effective. It is important to note, as some of the comments on his post have, that archives and libraries often have explicit rules about what kinds of equipment may or may not be used. These policies are normally in place to protect the materials, and it's vital to respect their well-being for future users. Lawson describes the practice employed by some of using plexiglass to hold the pages of books flat. He does not mention it, but this is damaging to rare materials and should be avoided. Lawson has found a better solution. He operates a wired camera remote with his foot, leaving his hands free to hold the pages flat.

Image: Jeff Tabaco, Notes, 2006. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Digital Imaging Standards: Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI)

Ever wonder how the VRC arrives at its digital imaging standards? We look to technical guidelines from sources like the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI). This summer they released the latest version of their Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials: Creation of Raster Image Master Files (PDF). Intended for an audience that includes "archivists, librarians, curators, managers, and others, as well as practitioners directly involved in scanning and digital capture, such as technicians and photographers," these guidelines may be very useful for photographers and artists seeking standards for archiving images depicting their original artwork. However, they will be too technical for some. As state in the introduction, "a basic foundation in photography and imaging is essential. Generally, without a good technical foundation and experience for production staff, there can be no claim about achieving the appropriate level of quality as defined in these guidelines."

The Guidelines address the digitization of still images within the realm of historical, cultural, or archival materials. The document begins with a technical overview providing details on raster image characteristics (include spatial resolution, signal resolution, and color mode), the digitization environment, assessing scanner and camera performance, and reference targets, followed by in-depth sections on imaging workflow, digitization specifications, file format comparisons, various types of metadata, storage recommendations, and quality management.

If you are a member of the Department of Art and Art History, feel free to ask us about this and other digital imaging best practices documents. Lia Pileggi, our Digital Imaging and Technology Coordinator, is available by appointment to discuss the best digitization and archiving strategies for your project. And of course, we offer free scanning services to instructors in the department.

For more information about FADGI, see their web site. In addition to their Still Image Working Group FADGI has an Audio-Visual Working Group, which hasn't yet produced an analogous Guidelines document but currently hosts a page on audio-visual Resources and Industry Standards with a lot of very helpful links.

Image: Alan Vernon. Morant's Curve - Digitized Velvia Slide film. 2010. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

ARTstor Mobile

Announcement from ARTstor:
"The ARTstor Digital Library is now accessible to registered ARTstor users through the iPad, iPhone, and the iPod Touch, providing read-only features such as searching and browsing, zooming, and viewing saved image groups. We are also introducing the Flashcard View for ARTstor Mobile, which allows users to test their knowledge by viewing the image without textual information, and then flipping the image to reveal the image record. This new view can be found under the “Views” menu as “Flashcard.” ARTstor Mobile is only available through the Safari browser, just go to http://library.artstor.org from your mobile device. For more details, visit our Help page at http://help.artstor.org/wiki/index.php/ARTstor_Mobile."

Image: atmtx, The Future of Computing, 2010. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

Got a Video Camera? Got a Tripod? You've Got Yourself a Camera Stabilizer!

On the subject of free video tools, if you already have a tripod you can use it as a camera stabilizer to keep your video camera more steady as you move with it. See this video for a demo from "wbeaty" on YouTube. Check out some of the response videos, like this one, showing this simple principle in action.

Reminder that the VRC lends video cameras and tripods to faculty and students in the Department of Art and Art History. See our Equipment and Classrooms Web page for details.

JayCut: Free Online Video Editing

Do you have some video footage to edit, but no access to editing software? Give JayCut a try. It's a full-featured video editor on the Web.

JayCut's features are surprisingly sophisticated for a free, Web-based application. While it doesn't replace expensive software like Apple Final Cut or Adobe Premiere, it does offer two tracks, to which you can add video clips, audio, text, and transitions. You can also record audio and video directly from your computer's microphone and Webcam. When you have finished editing you have the option to export your video directly to YouTube, or to your computer in the form of an H.264 MPEG-4, H.264 Flash video, or an Xvid AVI file.

If you need to save a project to revisit later, simply create a free account.

VRC Image Collection Now Available in LUNA

We are very pleased to announce that our image collection is available to Art and Art History faculty and students in the new and improved LUNA browser interface. Please see our Finding Images Web page for access information.

Recent videos from our Visiting Artist Program are now also available to Art and Art History faculty and students in LUNA. As of November 2011, these date back to 2007, but we are in the process of converting our entire collection to the streaming format to make available online to our faculty, students, and staff. Please see our Visiting Artist Videos Web page for more information.

Handy and Comprehensive List of (Mostly) Free Technology Tools

Overwhelmed by the seemingly never ending options for using technology in teaching, collaboration, imaging, video work, audio work, creating Web sites, calendaring, networking, etc.? Most of us are! Here's a site worth bookmarking. Kimberly McCollum, who teaches an online Teaching with Technology course at BYU, has created for her course a list of mostly free software tools with links, which are organized into helpful categories, such as:

• Tools for Creating, Editing, and Sharing -- Documents, Diagrams and Drawings, Images, Presentations, Web pages, Video, Audio
• Tools for Communicating and Networking -- Instant messaging, Discussion forums, Web conferencing and broadcasting, Tools for networking, Microblogging
• Tools for Managing Time, Tasks, and Information -- Course management, Time management, Task management, Project or team management, Information management

Each of these is subdivided further when helpful, making a reference document that is easy to read,  understand, and refer to when needed.

Image: Herman Vargas (HVargas), Wrench Rust, 2007. Available from Flickr via a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License

Now in ARTstor: Architecture from Europe and the Middle East by Sites and Photos

ARTstor has announced the recent addition of images depicting architecture from Europe and the Middle East from Sites and Photos, with over 30,000 images now available from this collection. Based in Israel, Sites and Photos' mission is to provide scholars with one of the world's most comprehensive archives of digital photography pertaining to Mediterranean archaeology, archaeology, architecture, and art.

ARTstor is constantly adding new images to its holdings, so it's worthwhile for faculty and students at subscribing institutions to check on their new content from time to time. ARTstor has a publicly available page, Collections: Descriptions & Status, which lists all contributing collections, with the current number of images and percentage of completion. Within the digital library, under the Browse section on the Welcome Page, select Collection to see a list of all of of the content providers. from here you can link directly to a collection in ARTstor, where you are able to browse the images or perform a search within that collection.

Photography in Public: Know Your Rights, These Are Your Rights

Especially after the events of 9/11, the Internet abounds with stories about people taking photographs on public property being harassed. Overzealous security guards and policemen have been known to invoke the law inaccurately, sometimes aggressively, in the attempt to dissuade photographers who are legally within their rights.  There are even Flickr groups devoted to this topic, such as the National Photographers' Rights Organization group and the Photography is not a crime group.

Some helpful introductory resources exist for those who are uncertain about where "public" ends and "private" begins.  Bert Krages is an attorney who is a nationally recognized advocate for the right to take photographs in public places.  He has published on his Web site "The Photographer’s Right: A Downloadable Flyer Explaining Your Rights When Stopped or Confronted for Photography."  This one-page guide introduces a basic principle: "The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs." Krages goes on to cite important exceptions to the general rule; permissible subjects; the rights of others to question you, detain you, or confiscate your property; some legal and other remedies in case you are harassed; and how to handle confrontations.  He suggests that photographers may wish to print out and keep a copy in their camera bag.  For those wishing to delve deeper into the subject, Krages has written a book: Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images.

Image: Thomas Hawk, Long Beach Harbor Patrol Say No Photography From a Public Sidewalk, 2008.  Available from Flickr via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

More Ultra-High Resolution Images from HAL9000

Italian company HAL9000 has added more images to its portfolio of ultra high-resolution images depicting Italian Renaissance art, with the latest additions coming from the Uffizi Galleries.  A while back I wrote about HAL9000's 16-billion pixel image of Leonardo's Last Supper. Their recent additions include Caravaggio's Bacchus (3.4 billion pixels), Verrocchio and Leonardo's Baptism of Christ (11.7 billion pixels), Leonardo's Annunciation (10.3 billion pixels), Botticelli's  Birth of Venus (20.4 billion pixels) and Primavera (28 billion pixels), and Bronzino's Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo (4.8 

billion pixels).

Nothing compares to standing in a gallery in the Uffizi with one of these masterpieces, but at the same time the features we can see here are not possible to witness in person.  These are the macro views that only a conservator might see in such dazzling detail, like brushstrokes, craquelures, the dirty fingernails of Bacchus, or the light reflecting off of a single pearl. The small price we pay is a little patience while waiting for the pictures to load, and tolerating the 

presence of the Haltadefinizione watermarks.

For more information about HAL9000 and the process used to photograph these works, see this post over at Wired.

Create Color Schemes Based on Photos Using ColorSuckr

Continuing with the theme of color... I have discussed online color pickers before (here and here), but a color extractor is a bit different. Let's say you already have an image that you would like to feature on a Web site, and you would like to create a coordinated color scheme.  ColorSuckr is an online tool that you may want to try.

The ColorSuckr site allows you to enter the URL of an image online, and the tools will automatically create a color scheme of samples using the 12 most common colors from an image, each accompanied by Hex, Web safe and RGB color codes.  Those wishing to explore further color combinations using the particular swatches provided can link to "Show color schemes," which takes them to schemes assembled by the community of users over at COLOURlovers.  Plenty of inspiration here to work with.

ColorSuckr also lets you search for Flickr images on its site.  For those wishing to use the tool often, ColorSuckr provides shortcuts to the process in the form of a bookmarklet, as well as a Firefox add-on that enables the process with a simple right-click.

Image: [With churches, Molde, Norway], from the Library of Congress (shown with color scheme from ColorSuckr), ca. 1890 to ca. 1900.  Available from Flickr's The Commons, with no known copyright restrictions.

How Well Do You See Color?

According to X-Rite, 1 out of 255 women and 1 out of 12 men have some form of color vision deficiency.  Do you?  Take the Online Color Challenge, based on the official FM100 Hue Test by X-Rite.  You may be surprised by the results!  Of course, if you believe that you do have a deficiency in your ability to accurately see colors, have your vision checked by a professional.  Colors on computer monitors tend to vary widely.
 

Use Dropbox to Back up, Sync, and Share Your Files

I recently posted about the importance of backing up your files, where I cited the 3-2-1 rule for backups: three copies (primary and two backups), two types of media, and one copy stored off site.  Dropbox is a service that can help with this model, and it's free for up up to 2 GB.  Dropbox lets you easily back up, sync, and share files with others.

Dropbox creates a folder on your computer where you may place files that you can then make accessible from any other computer in the world, either to you exclusively or also to other people of your choosing.  When you change a file in this folder, it automatically changes the corresponding file housed on the Dropbox folder residing on another computer (imagine using this tool to sync your files between your home and office computers).

Use Dropbox as a tool for backup and you'll have at least one copy stored off-site on a Dropbox server.  If you additionally use Dropbox to sync your files on a computer at home and another at work, this gives you three copies in three different locations.  Add automatic backups operating on an external hard drive and you have a pretty secure system for your most important files.

ProfHacker has featured enthusiastic posts in recent months about how academics make use of Dropbox: see this one on using Dropbox for backups, and this one for using Dropbox for syncing.

NASA Joins The Commons at Flickr

NASA has just joined The Commons at Flickr, bringing the current number of participating institutions to 46.  As with all images in The Commons there are no known copyright restrictions, a fact worth noting whether you are a a scholar or creative artist.

The Commons' objectives are:

1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and

2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!)

To enhance understanding and access to the images in The Commons, members of the public are encouraged to share their perspectives and even expertise by tagging images.  But as Flickr notes, "Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!"

Image: Spiro Agnew and Lyndon Johnson Watch the Apollo 11 Liftoff, 1969. Available from Flickr with no known copyright restrictions.

Back It Up!

You are backing up your important files, aren't you?  I was reminded just last week in a discussion with a faculty member that not everyone is, but most of us would be devastated to lose the stuff we keep on our computers.  Here's a quote from New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, whose computer's hard drive failed several years ago, leading to the loss of all of his files: "There's two kinds of people in the world: those who have good regular backup systems and those who will."  Pogue was able to recover most, but not all of his files through a data recovery company, but it cost him a lot of money. 

An external hard drive is a good place to start, but it may not be a sufficient solution alone.  The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a good article that details the issues, threats, and options concerning backups.  They advocate the 3-2-1 rule: three copies (primary and two backups), two types of media,  with one copy stored off site.  While professional photographers might find the expense of online backups to be prohibitive due to the size of their professional archives, scholars and students may wish to consider a service like Dropbox. See Ryan Cordell's article over at ProfHacker for more information.

ASMP reminds us that the threats to are data are numerous:

• Device failure
• Viruses
• Malicious damage
• Volume and Directory glitches
• Transfer corruption
• Lightning strike/Voltage surge
• Theft
• Fire or water damage
• Human error

There is a reason why the data recovery company with whom David Pogue worked keeps a suicide counselor on staff.  If you haven't already, find a good, automated system for backups today.  Start with these articles written by Jason B. Jones,  Merlin Mann, and John Gruber. 

Image: Eric Hart (Eqqman), Filed,  2009.  Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year

Looking for ways to incorporate more technology in the classroom?  Over at Free Technology for Teachers Richard Byrne has shared 11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year.  Each of these entries is accompanied by suggestions for free resources that educators can use.

1. Build a Blog or Build a Better Blog
2. Build a Wiki With Your Students
3. Build a Website
4. Create Videos Without Purchasing any Equipment
5. Create Maps to Tell a Story
6. Try Backchanneling in Your Classroom
7. Join a Social Network for Your Professional Development
8. Use an Online Service to Save Your Bookmarks
9. Get Your Students Searching More Than Just Google.com
10. Have Your Students Create Podcasts
11. Eliminate Inbox Overload

Richard Byrne's blog is well worth following. Recent entries include Tech Tip - Easy Sharing of Long URLs; Wetoku - Conduct, Record, and Share Video Conferences; An Overview of the History of Visual Thinking; and How to Choose a Safe Password.  I have just added his blog to my RSS reader.

Via Ellyssa Kroski at iLibrarian.

Image: Vernon Fowler (vfowler), computers, 2007, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

ARTstor Subject Guides

ARTstor now offers twenty-two subject guides on a broad range of topics.  These one-page PDF documents "highlight relevant collections, unique interdisciplinary content, search strategies, and search terms that greatly aid discoverability across disciplines in the Digital Library."

These guides illustrate that, despite the emphasis on "art" in ARTstor's name, its content is useful to scholars and students in a wide range of disciplines, especially across the humanities and social sciences.

The current subjects covered are: African and African American Studies; American Studies; Anthropology; Architecture and the Built Environment; Asian Studies; Classical Studies; Design; Decorative Arts; Fashion and Costume; History of Medicine and Natural Science; Languages and Literature; Latin American Studies; Maps and Geography; Medieval Studies; Middle Eastern Studies; Music History; Native American Studies; Photography; Religious Studies; Renaissance Studies; Theater and Dance; and Women's Studies.

Visual Literacy Standards

I am back from an incredible month in Uganda (highly recommended, especially if you are not too attached to hot water showers), and waiting for me in my inbox was an announcement about a new blog on developing Visual Literacy Competency Standards from the Image Resources Interest Group (IRIG) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).  ACRL brought us the much used Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, so this is a very welcome development for educators who teach visual literacy.  As our culture and so many others have increasingly adopted images to communicate, including selling, convincing, illustrating, etc., visual literacy is really an important topic for everyone, not just those in the arts.

IRIG has posted five potential definitions of visual literacy proposed at their meeting during this year's American Library Association conference in Washington, DC.  What do you think about these definitions?  I look forward to the final product, which will be an especially helpful instruction guide for academic librarians and visual resources professionals.

Image: Trey Ratcliff (Stuck in Customs), The Sunset of Your Childhood, 2008.  Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 GenericLicense.

Oldie But Goodie Just for Fun: Creature Comforts on Art

If you have not seen this clip on art from the Creature Comforts America series, do yourself a favor right now and spend seven minutes watching it.  You won't be sorry -- it's a hoot.  It's been around for about three years now, but it's just too good to let it slip into obscurity.  The Aardman Animation folks recorded interviews with a variety of Americans about their views on art, and then used their signature stop-motion animation to accompany the best responses.  Many instructors for both studio art and art history courses have shown this clip to their students not only for an entertaining change of pace, but also as a departure point for a serious discussion about what art is and the variety of ways that people view and appreciate it.

Buy Creature Comforts America Season 1 here.

YouTube Offers Online Video Editor

It won't replace Final Cut Pro, but now you can perform simple edits on video clips in your YouTube account.  For more information see the announcement on YouTube's blog and the overview at the Getting Started: YouTube's Video Editor page.

As described by YouTube,  the Video Editor lets you:

• Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
• Trim at the beginning and / or ending of your videos
• Add a soundtrack from our AudioSwap library
• Create new videos without worrying about file formats, and publish the new video to YouTube with one click (no new upload is required)

This is sure to be a popular tool and I am guessing that YouTube will eventually add more features to supplement this basic functionality.  If the comments on the blog posting are any indication, there is great demand for simplifying video production, editing, and delivery.

To dive right in and start playing around with the Video Editor, head directly over to the editor page. 

Distributing Teaching Presentations, from JISC

JISC provides yet another helpful advice document, this time on distributing teaching presentations.  Because of its market share dominance among presentation tools, PowerPoint is the main focus of this piece, although some options for Keynote users are mentioned.  The document includes information about SlideShare, PDFs, and screencasting.

The document closes with a noteworthy statement: "It is important to ensure that in making the presentation more widely available the user is not breaching the copyright of the material (including the text) within the presentation."  Slideshare allows you to restrict access to selected people on a contact list, such as students or colleagues.  And of course, the University of Colorado's learning management system, CULearn, provides the same functionality.  Instructors should contact Steve Bailey, our Academic Technology Coordinator extraordinaire, for more information about using CULearn.

Image: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Portrait with PowerPoint, after Pieter Jansz van Asch, 2009, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

COLTT Conference: Wednesday August 11th and Thursday August 12th, 2010

Yeehaw -- here comes COLTT!  Early registration rates are available through July 15th for the Colorado Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference. COLTT will be held Wednesday August 11th and Thursday August 12th, 2010 on the CU-Boulder Campus.  While this is conceived as a regional event, the quality of the programming attracts people from beyond Colorado's borders.  This year's sessions promise to continue the tradition of excellence.  The following is just a sample of the offerings we can look forward to -- see the COLTT Web site for a complete list of sessions.

• Twitter in Education: What, How, and Why
• Google Scholar: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Web 2.0 in Practice Across Disciplines
• Teaching the forgotten aspects of media literacy
• Death to boring PowerPoints, using Web 2.0 tools
• Journey to Webinar City
• Prezi: Finding the forest AND the trees
• Facilitating Learning with Technology in Diverse Classrooms
• To Ban or Not to Ban, Digital Distractions in the Higher Education Classroom
• Digital Pedagogies and the Student 2.0
• Participatory Media and Civic Engagement
• Enhancing Class Discussions with FREE Web Tools

In addition to many other great sessions, there will be a keynote address from Adrian Sannier and a featured talk by J. John Cohen. And don't miss the Café Pédagogique, which "provides a forum for public discussion of interesting and controversial issues related to teaching and learning with technology. Several audience members speak for a few minutes on their single most provocative idea, radical move, fondest wish, or related thought-provoking topic, which invariably generates lively small-group and large-group discussions." This year's Café Pédagogique will be held at Carelli's restaurant in Boulder.

John Steltz's Top Ten 2.0 Tools – 2010

A follow up to my last post: High school teacher John Steltz recently shared his personal list of Top Ten 2.0 Tools on his blog.  His experience and his list are informative for anyone interested in diving into social media in the classroom, whether in secondary or higher education.  His first step toward adopting these technologies was exploring the rather overwhelming site Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools (Steltz was overwhelmed by its comprehensive content; I was overwhelmed by its jarring color scheme, but don't let that overshadow the fact that this is a very useful site).  He then began to experiment, and has now used over 35 tools in his teaching so far.  The criteria for his top ten list were how user friendly the tool is and how well it presented itself to the class.

Perhaps most significant for academic educators is the fact that college students are coming into the classroom with these experiences from high school.  More and more they expect a dynamic and collaborative educational environment.  How might we in higher education most effectively build upon the foundations many of these students already possess when they arrive at college?

Image: nickrate, Web 2.0 Collage v2, 2010. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Brian Croxall's Reflections on Teaching with Social Media

Blogs, wikis, Twitter, GoogleDocs, Zotero...  There are many social media tools that instructors are using these days to engage with their students and, more importantly, encourage their students to engage with the course and with each other.  We cannot ignore the Millennials' lifelong immersion in technology, and many studies have shown that this generation of college students tends to learn collaboratively.  Over at ProfHacker, Brian Croxall has posted an interesting piece reflecting on his experiences using these kinds of social technologies in his teaching.

Overall, he believes that adopting the tools is worthwhile, but he cautions instructors to be ready for technical problems from time to time and to watch for tool fatigue.  It's worth noting that, in his experience, students tend to not use these tools for coursework unless they are required.  It's a good reminder that while students these days may be plugged in, they are no more likely to voluntarily engage with these technologies for the class than they are to do their reading voluntarily.  Some will; many won't.  These are simply tools.

Brought to you by the Chronicle of Higher Education, ProfHacker is a great blog for those interested in using technology to enhance pedagogy.  It "delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education, Monday through Friday." Its content categories are editorial, profession, teaching, productivity, wellness, software, hardware, analog, and reviews.

Image: webtreats, Black Ink Grunge Stamp Texture Social Media Icons, 2009, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Bulk Uploads and Downloads in Flickr

Do you wish you could upload and download images to and from your Flickr account more quickly?  Let me tell you about two tools that can make your life easier:

Flickr Uploader lets you upload images in batches, also giving you the opportunity to provide tags, titles, descriptions; select or create sets to include the photos in; and establish certain settings such as safety levels, content type, and who will see the photos.  Don't forget that free Flickr accounts are limited to 100 MB, whereas the annual subscription-based Flickr pro account permits an unlimited number of images in your account.

Bulkr is a third party tool that allows you to download images in batches.  You can easily create backups of all of your Flickr images.  Simply download the tool and launch it -- you will be asked to authenticate to your Flickr account and then grant permission to Bulkr to access your images.  Next, you can select your entire photostream, specific images, specific sets, or images marked as favorites.

You may also wish to use Bulkr to download images from other users who have authorized this under a Creative Commons license.  To do this, simply select the Flickr tab at the top of the Bulkr window.  Notice that you can search by keyword, and select Creative Commons under the License heading.  You can also search by individual users, groups, or explore by date the photos deemed "interesting" by Flickr.

Flickr Uploader and Bulkr are free tools, available for either Mac or Windows platforms.  I have used them both with success -- they are easy to download and use.

We'd like to hear from you if you are a fan of other Flickr tools.

Bulkr tip via Guiding Tech

MoMA's Flickr Photostream: Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present

Until recently I was unaware that the Museum of Modern Art has a Flickr photostream.  Then I found myself there, completely rapt, poring over Marco Anelli's portraits of audience members taken as they sat with Marina Abramović at her epic performance, The Artist is Present.  These powerful images convey the intensity of this experience, which moves many participants to tears.  As you can see from the images, this grueling experience also has brought Abramović to tears on more than one occasion.  Today is the last day that Abramović will perform at the MoMA, where for six days a week since March 14th she has been seated on a wooden chair for more than seven hours a day with no breaks whatsoever.  I look forward to reading about her account of the experience after it's over.

The majority of visitors are members of the public at large (a fascinating variety of people), but Abramović's performance has also brought visits from many art world luminaries, as well as famous musicians, actors, and writers.  It's fun to play "spot the celebrity" -- sprinkled throughout the Flickr set of over a thousand photos you will find images of Antony Gormley, Lou Reed, Isabella Rossellini, Matthew Barney, Christiane Amanpour, Rufus Wainwright, Sean Kelly, Sharon Stone, Tehching Hsieh, Andre Serrano, Kim Catrall, Joan Jonas, Marisa Tomei, Björk, and many others.  Because I'm sentimental, my personal favorite is Ulay, who showed up to sit with Abramović at the opening reception.  This is the first time the former couple have “performed” together since their final piece in 1988, where they each walked over 1,200 miles from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and met in the middle to bid each other farewell.

Quite honestly, there is not a lot of prior content that would have drawn me and many others to the MoMA's Flickr photostream.  I hope the success of this series will encourage them to share more exhibition images with us in the future.

Not coincidentally, the VRC has recently added a number of images documenting Abramović's body of work beginning in the 1970s.  These images are available to all faculty and students at the University of Colorado -- see our Web site for information about accessing our collection.

Image: animalvegetable, Marina Abramovic / The Artist is Present (detail), 2010, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

UbuWeb

Looking for avante-garde video and audio pieces?  Try UbuWeb , a "completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts."  UbuWeb is an entity which makes its content freely available for noncommercial and educational use.  The site includes works by art-world heavy hitters and lesser known creators.  Spend a little time poking around the site and you will be rewarded with all sorts of interesting content.

The philosophy behind UbuWeb is admirable -- from the Web site: "Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome fabrication considerations, information can literally "be free": on UbuWeb, we give it away and have been doing so since 1996. We publish in full color for pennies. We receive submissions Monday morning and publish them Monday afternoon. UbuWeb's work never goes 'out of print.' UbuWeb is a never-ending work in progress: many hands are continually building it on many platforms.

"UbuWeb has no need for money, funding or backers. Our web space is provided by an alliance of interests sympathetic to our vision. Donors with an excess of bandwidth contribute to our cause. All labour and editorial work is voluntary; no money changes hands. Totally independent from institutional support, UbuWeb is free from academic bureaucracy and its attendant infighting, which often results in compromised solutions; we have no one to please but ourselves."

Image: Bruce Nauman, Still from Pinch Neck | Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967-68.

Check Your Facebook Privacy Settings with ReclaimPrivacy.org's Facebook Privacy Scanner

You would have to be pretty unplugged to have not heard all of the recent buzz about privacy issues with Facebook. If you're like me, you enjoy the benefits that Facebook offers for staying connected with friends and family. Sharing news, photos, opinions, links, Scrabble games, etc. is great, but I don't wish to share these with the entire world. Figuring out how to control Facebook's baroque privacy settings is not straightforward -- some say intentionally so.

This is why I love ReclaimPrivacy.org's Facebook privacy scanner. It's a free utility that you install by simply dragging a bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar. Next, visit your Facebook privacy settings and click on the bookmarklet. The application scans your privacy settings relating to your status updates, personal information, tags, contacts, and applications. In moments it displays a report on your account at the top of the page.

Items flagged with "caution" or "insecure" are accompanied by links to the particular settings pages where you make adjustments to shore up security. Visit the links, tweak the settings, and go back and re-scan your account to check the success of your adjustments. Couldn't be easier.

The ReclaimPrivacy.org site notes that they are currently developing privacy scans for photos, which the scanner utility does not yet check. They also caution that Firefox currently has some compatibility issues that they are investigating, so for the moment it is best to use Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome.

If you are concerned about your privacy but not ready to cancel your Facebook account, give this application a try and tell your friends. Then connect with us at the Art and Art History Visual Resource Center's Facebook page. There we feature feeds from this blog and other information about our facility, which provides and facilitates access to images, imaging, and related information resources.

New! Export ARTstor Image Groups to PowerPoint

Good news: ARTstor has announced that all users can now export image groups directly to PowerPoint, a feature that was launched in beta last fall and at the time available only to those with Instructor Privileges.   From ARTstor's Help documentation:

"Please check all technical requirements before using this feature, including adding ARTstor as a trusted site or disabling popup blockers, and saving the file to an accessible location; you must also have PowerPoint 2007 or later to use the file.

1. Log into your ARTstor account and open an image group containing 100 or fewer images.
2. Above the image group thumbnails, towards the right side of the screen you will see the export to PowerPoint button (). Click this.
3. A window will appear telling you how many images you can download in the current 120 day period. Click Yes. You will then be asked to accept the Terms & Conditions of Use for the group of ARTstor images you are downloading. Click Accept.
4. A new window will appear with a progress bar as your PowerPoint 2007 presentation file is generated. This may take several minutes, depending on the group size.
5. If prompted to open or save, choose to SAVE the file to your computer. Once you have saved the .pptx file you can open and edit it using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.

Each image will appear on its own slide, with the image data in the notes field below each slide. When in presentation mode, each image will also be hyperlinked to the original image in ARTstor, which you can open to enlarge, pan and rotate online."

In addition to this new feature, ARTstor has also enhanced the functionality in notes and has implemented a few other updates.  See their announcement for details.

Images from the Spring 2010 BFA Show

The VRC has posted some photos from the opening of the Spring 2010 BFA exhibition: Image from The Art of the Future TODAY. You can find them at the Visual Resources, Art and Art History, CU-Boulder group.  At the moment they appear at the beginning of the group's images, but if you visit the group page after other images have been added, they can be found with the search term "20100423". Our stellar VRC student employee Sarah Derosier tooks photos on our behalf at the opening -- thanks, Sarah!

If you are a current or former student or faculty member and you have a Flickr account (or would like to create a Flickr account and participate), please consider joining the Visual Resources, Art and Art History, CU-Boulder group and staying in touch with the department visually.  Images might depict your creative work and interests, your research and scholarship (e.g., photographs from your travels), or departmental activities and facilities (e.g., show openings, the new Visual Arts Complex, etc.). Show us what you're up to!  We would also like to see some more images of this show opening, so bring 'em on.

For those who may be interested in the VRC's visual documentation of other recent events related to the Department of Art and Art History at CU-Boulder, the sets we have created on our Flickr account can be found here.

Congratulations to BFA graduates Brent Bishop, Yolanda Chichester, Elissa Eaton, Jon Geiger, Virginia Kester-Meyer, Eli Lichtenstein, Chris Lovejoy, Dillon O'Kelley, Mary Recchia, Jake Reed, Evan Rocco, and Maya Weinstein!

Guide by Kevin Purdy: Clean Up Your Photo Collection with Free Tools

Is your personal digital image collection a mess?  Disorganized folders?  Duplicate Photos?  Personally,  I spend every working day of my life ensuring that the VRC's digital image collection is managed as well as it can be, but I'll admit here that my personal images have not received the same care and attention.  That's why I am happy to see  Kevin Purdy's helpful guide posted over at lifehacker: Clean Up Your Photo Collection with Free Tools.  While the focus is on the Windows environment, he offers Mac alternatives in each section.  Full of references to useful tools, this article is a good reminder that digital resources need to be organized for optimal access and management.  Another good reminder: back up, back up, back up!

Image: DavidDMuir, Photo a Day Mosaic for June 2007, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

40,000 More Images of the Built Environment Available at CU-Boulder

Great news from CU-Boulder's University Libraries!  With the purchase of 40,000 Archivision images and their immediate availability to our campus within ARTstor as Institutional Collections, the built-environment  materials available through CU-Digital Library collections have almost doubled.  In Art and Architecture librarian Meredith Kahn's words from her recent e-mail announcement:

"The University Libraries is proud to announce the purchase of 40,000 digital images of the built environment.  These high-quality images cover a range of geographic areas and time periods, and were shot by a professional architectural photographer from the firm Archivision, a major provider of architectural images.  Architecture, landscape architecture, gardens and parks, important historical sites, cityscapes, selected works of public art, and architectural drawings and plans are included in the collection."

While many were involved in this process, it was the hard work especially of Meredith Kahn and Lynn Lickteig, Director of the College of Architecture and Planning's Visual Resource Center, which made this happen.  Thank you, Meredith and Lynn!

The collections comprising the  CU-Digital Library offer many high quality images of architecture and other built works to members of the University of Colorado community.  Of particular note, the College of Architecture and Planning houses over 45,000 images of "contemporary and historical architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and related disciplines, including fine arts."  Their special Colorado Architecture collection, which is available to anyone in the world, provides "over 450 Colorado sites and structures, including those which are significant because they have received awards from professional design and planning associations or because they appear on state and national registers of historic places."

Finding Video, Audio and Images Online: JISC Advice Document

JISC Digital Media continues providing the world with helpful information: they have recently updated their advice document, Finding Video, Audio and Images Online.  Lots of good information here about Web site databases and online collections, search tips, search engines, automatic alerts, etc. Their first piece of advice is to be clear about what you want from your search, and they've embedded this video from an adorable short film about actual requests at the Hulton Archive for images that could never exist.  I think most of us who work with image collections recognize this challenge!



JISC Digital Media is the UK service that provides advice, guidance and training to the UK's Further and Higher Education community.  Fortunately for those of us across the pond and elsewhere, they freely share their advice documents online.  They are divided into advice on still images, moving images, audio, and cross-media.  Each of these areas contains dozens of advice documents, organized into easy to navigate sections, with information about file formats, software, hardware, managing digitization (er, digitisation) projects, managing digital resources, and finding digital resources.  There is a wealth of information here.  Thank you, JISC!

Images from Spring 2010 MFA Opening on VRC Flickr Page

The VRC has added 45 images from Friday's Spring 2010 MFA thesis show opening to the VRC Flickr group.

-- For now they should appear as the first 45 images in the Group Pool.  If someone has added images to the Group Pool in the meantime, you can find the VRC images by doing a search for "2010-04-02."

-- Anyone with other images from the show or from other Art and Art History events is encouraged to join our Flickr group to share their images there.

-- Congratulations to the grads on an excellent show, and to the CU Art Museum for its inaugural exhibition!

"Content-Aware" Smart Fill Coming to Adobe Photoshop CS5

 

With the new content-aware fill feature coming in Photoshop CS5, we won't know what to do with all of our leisure time.  Watch this short video for a preview of the impressive new technology at work.

At first, some thought this was too good to be true, that it must be a hoax.  The well-deserved hype around this demo has spawned some funny responses, such as this video.

Now Available in ARTstor...

ARTstor has announced newly available images in its digital library.  From the ARTstor news release:

Art and architecture from pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela photographed by William Keighley (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
ARTstor is collaborating with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to make available approximately 900 images of art and architecture from pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela photographed by William Keighley.  Learn more 

Additional plans of Ancient and Medieval buildings and archaeological sites from Bryn Mawr College
The final set of images depicting plans of archaeological sites and architectural monuments contributed by Bryn Mawr College are now available in the Digital Library, bringing the collection total to nearly 8,000 images.  Learn more 

Architecture by Le Corbusier
ARTstor has collaborated with the School of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Dalhousie University to make available approximately 250 images of architecture by Le Corbusier in the Digital Library. Learn more 

Photographs of art, architecture, and culture in Southeast Asia and Morocco
ARTstor has collaborated with Barbara Anello to make available 750 images of the architecture, arts, and culture of Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Morocco in the Digital Library. Learn more

National Archives UK Joins the Commons at Flickr

Flickr welcomed the National Archives UK to The Commons yesterday.  As the UK government's official archive, they cover "over 900 years of history with records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls through to digital files and archived websites."  They have selected images they feel represent the broad range of over 10 million documents, maps, photographs, and artwork.

What can you find in the National Archives UK Flickr site?  While relatively small, it's an eclectic and intriguing range of materials.  There's a set of photographs taken in the Sudan and Egypt on an expedition for the relief of Khartoum by Anglo-Italian photographer Felice Beato (1832-1909).  There are two groups containing a smattering of nineteenth and twentieth century photographs.  Other groups include Artwork and Illuminations, Historic Documents, Seals and Artifacts, and Maps and Plans.  As with all content in The Commons, there are no known copyright restrictions.

See the National Archives UK Web site for more information about their vast holdings.

Image: Wall to Wall Crystal Palace, 1850/1, from Flickr, no known copyright restrictions.

Visual Resources Assocation, Atlanta 2010

Just back from the 28th Annual Conference of the Visual Resources Association, held in Atlanta.  I attended many inspiring and thought-provoking sessions on topics such as social networking, metadata, new technologies, instruction, and more.  Plenary speakers Peter Brantley and Jason Roy both discussed the new roles that visual resources departments and libraries can play in the changing technology landscape.  As always, this conference offers a compelling vision of future trends and possibilities, with practical guidance for our operations today.  I wouldn't miss it!

Anyone involved with creating, managing, and/or delivering images and other visual resources should be familiar with the Visual Resources Association (VRA) -- it is a truly amazing organization made up of incredibly knowledgeable and generous members who freely share resources and information about images with each other and with affiliated groups.  I really can't say enough about this group -- it has been my professional lifeline for over ten years now.

VRC Training Available in Digital Imaging

Are you confused by DPI and PPI?  Are you unsure about the best file format and size for images you need for a particular purpose?  Have you taught yourself how to edit your images in Photoshop, but feel like you could use some guidance to get more out the tools?  Well, if you are an Art and Art History student or faculty member, you are in luck.  Lia Pileggi, our Digital Imaging and Technology Coordinator, is available by appointment Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., to help you with your digital imaging project.  Whether you are preparing a digital image presentation for a class, archiving a portfolio of your creative work, or applying for grants or scholarships, Lia will help you make your images look their best.  Lia is a great teacher -- she is clear, concise, and patient, and will work with you at whatever level you need.  Everyone will also agree that she also happens to be super cool.

Remember that the VRC houses community imaging stations featuring:

• New 24" iMac desktop computers
• Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium (Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash Professional, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, OnLocation,  Encore, and Bridge)
• Neutral gray walls (RGB-balanced) behind monitors for optimal color management
• Daylight balanced lighting (5000K) for optimal color management
• Regularly color-calibrated monitors
• Easy-to-use Vuescan software

 For more information contact Lia at 303-735-1640, or Lia.Pileggi@colorado.edu.

Free Sites for Sharing Very Large Files

Have you ever been stumped on how to share a very large file, such as a video?  Over at CNET, Josh Lowensohn has posted a very useful entry on paid and free services that allow you to share very large files with colleagues, friends, and family.

Lowensohn provides a list divided into free and paid services, along with a brief overview of the features that each one offers.  The "Which one to use?" section helps you assess whether a free service will meet your needs.

Image: nouQraz, Laptop Orchestra @ Wired Nextfest 2006, 2006.  From Flickr, some rights reserved under an Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Clever Music Video Inspired by Art History

Art history fans should take a few minutes to watch this music video for the song "70 Million," by the band Hold Your Horses!  It's a creative and fun tribute to the canon of Western art.  I love the low budg sets, which are actually quite effective (good lighting always helps).  While it's hard to pick, I think my favorite is the nod to Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of Her Sisters.

14 Tools to Teach about Creative Commons

Creative Commons licenses facilitate access to all kinds of media works for use in creative and scholarly pursuits, but they also provide individuals who create works (whether text, image, sound, or video-based) more flexibility in how they wish to share these works with others.  With the growing prevalence of digital media, copyright ethics is an increasingly important matter for creators, users, and educators to understand and appreciate.  Over at the The Clever Sheep, Rodd Lucier has shared 14 Tools to Teach about Creative Commons.   The sections are Creative Commons Toolkits, Great Places to Host and License Your Creative Work, Video Explanations of The Creative Commons, Creative Commons Audio Sources, My Favourite Open Source Projects, Slideshow Explanations for Education, Creative Commons Social Networks, and Late Additions.

Under late additions, the presentation Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know is particularly useful to anyone involved in instruction, asking questions such as "How do we model academic integrity?" and "How can we teach 'creative integrity'?"

Via the always informative Ellyssa Kroski at iLibrarian.

Image: Temari 09, Learning time, 2009. From Flickr, some rights reserved under an Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license.

WorldImages: 75,000 Images from California State University

Scholars and students who study visual culture should be aware of WorldImages, a free and growing resource offering images for use in teaching, scholarship, and research.  WorldImages is a remarkable project initiated and directed by Dr. Kathleen Cohen of California State University.  Over the years she has photographed works related to her teaching, first in the form of slides and more recently in digital format.  As the collection has grown to nearly 75,000 images, so have its contributors.  This is an impressive and inspiring model of collaboration, and a generous example of academic sharing.  As its title suggests, the image collection covers a very broad range of cultures and historical periods.  Check it out!

There are a number of ways to search the collection.  You can browse the collections by themed groups called portfolios, including community portfolios, which comprise interesting and useful sets compiled by community members.  You can also search by keyword, advanced, quick, date, and creator biography searches.  More information is available at the Help and Tutorials pages.

How can these images be used? "Faculty from many disciplines are using the images for research assignments, to create course study pages, to include in their lectures and to create on-line materials. Students are using the image database for study and research, for term papers, and to create collaborative multimedia presentations."

Image: Anonymous, Roman Republican/Early Imperial. Mosaic, Theater masks. Rome, Italy. ©Kathleen Cohen. Work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

U.S. National Archives in The Commons at Flickr

The U.S. National Archives has joined The Commons at Flickr.  Their high resolution offerings feature photographs by Ansel Adams, Mathew Brady, lots of images from the EPA's DOCUMERICA project (1971-1977), and many more historical photographs and documents.  You can view their collections here.  As with all images in The Commons, these images carry no known copyright restrictions.

Image: Erik Calonius, Interior of Graffiti-Marked Subway Car, 05/1973. From the DOCUMERICA project. U.S. National Archives.  From Flickr, no known copyright restrictions.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Online

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History houses more than three million objects, and the museum is gradually building its online collection to share these treasures with you electronically.  You can browse the collections by such subjects as advertising, art, family and social life, food, natural resources, popular entertainment, religion, transportation, work, and many more.  You can choose to limit your search to items accompanied by images.  It's fun to browse through their "featured object groups," such as the National Numismatic Collection, the National Quilt Collection and The Ferris Collection of Prints.

 On the subject of art, the NMAH Web site states, "The National Museum of American History is not an art museum. But works of art fill its collections and testify to the vital place of art in everyday American life. The ceramics collections hold hundreds of examples of American and European art glass and pottery. Fashion sketches, illustrations, and prints are part of the costume collections. Donations from ethnic and cultural communities include many homemade religious ornaments, paintings, and figures. The Harry T Peters "America on Stone" collection alone comprises some 1,700 color prints of scenes from the 1800s. The National Quilt Collection is art on fabric. And the tools of artists and artisans are part of the Museum's collections, too, in the form of printing plates, woodblock tools, photographic equipment, and potters' stamps, kilns, and wheels."

Image: Mexican Guerrilleros, from the Harry T. Peters "America on Stone" Lithography Collection, National Museum of American History.