Derivative Image

SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T07:41:00.002-07:00

Why have Wikipedia, Craigslist, and so many other sites gone dark today? Why is there so much controversy about SOPA and PIPA? Many people feel that protecting intellectual property is important, but that these anti-piracy bills would amount to censorship with drastic consequences for the Internet as we know it today. Can we come up with better solutions to the problems? Take a little time today to learn more about SOPA and PIPA, and contact your senator if what you learn concerns you.

Proposed legislation:

Learn more:

Take action:

Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education from ACRL

2012-01-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

The ubiquity of images and visual media -- together with their great power to persuade, contextualize, engage, and illustrate -- underscore the importance of visual literacy today. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), which published its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education over a decade ago, recently released its visual complement: Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. These standards define visual literacy as "a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media."

Relevant to studies in any discipline, these standards aim to provide educators with "an intellectual framework and structure to facilitate the development of skills and competencies required for students to engage with images in an academic environment, and critically use and produce visual media throughout their professional lives."

Detailed performance indicators and learning outcomes expand on each of the following seven standards:

The visually literate student determines the nature and extent of the visual materials needed.
The visually literate student finds and accesses needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently.
The visually literate student interprets and analyzes the meanings of images and visual media.
The visually literate student evaluates images and their sources.
The visually literate student uses images and visual media effectively.
The visually literate student designs and creates meaningful images and visual media.
The visually literate student understands many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and accesses and uses visual materials ethically.

Of course, these issues are the bread and butter of visual artists and art historians in academia; after all, this is what you do. However, the standards note that "visual literacy education is typically a collaborative endeavor, involving faculty, librarians, curators, archivists, visual resources professionals, and learning technologists." There are many ways that the VRC can support your students in pursuit of each of these standards. These include, but are not limited to, help with:

identifying a variety of image sources, materials, and types;
finding and accessing images and visual media effectively and efficiently;
retrieving or reproducing the needed image using appropriate technologies or systems (e.g., download functions, copy and paste, scanning, cameras);
making judgments about the reliability and accuracy of image sources;
using technology effectively to work with images;
using a variety of tools and technologies to produce images and visual media;
understanding many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding images and visual media (including intellectual property, copyright, and fair use).

We look forward to discussing ways that we can support your teaching in pursuit of these goals. Drop us a line!

Image: Michael Coghlan (mikecogh), Buddha with Swastika, 2011, available from Flickr under a Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Fall 2011 Commencement Images

2011-12-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

The VRC has posted our images from the Department of Art and Art History's fall 2011 commencement ceremony on our Flickr page. Congratulations to all, our very best wishes for the future, and please stay in touch with the department. Our Alumni Newsletter and Facebook are easy ways to let us (and your classmates) know where life is taking you.

Do you have images from this or other departmental events? Please help us document our departmental history by joining the department's Flickr group and sharing them there.

Garrison Roots, We Will Always Miss You

2011-12-22T09:06:00.001-07:00


Garrison,Visual Arts Complex Dedication Ceremony. Sept. 2010

The Department of Art and Art History is mourning the passing of Garrison Roots. He was our chair, a professor of sculpture, an active practicing artist, and all around sterling human being. While his death was not entirely unexpected, the loss we feel today is very deep.

Garrison guided the department as we moved from an amorphous program plan to our newly constructed Visual Arts Complex. While our fabulous new state-of-the-art home is a physical monument to his achievements, Garrison's less visible contributions to the soul of our department were even more important. He was a unifying force who chose to see the best in every human being. He gave everyone a forum to speak and the agency to act, which made us all feel like invested members of a community, even part of a family.

Personally, I appreciate so much the kind support and great humor he always shared with me. I tried not to abuse the open door policy in his office, but his approachability made it so easy to just drop by to say hello or bring up any issues on my mind. And while it's pretty unusual for anyone to look forward to staff meetings, we always did because they were productive yet full of laughter and good cheer.

Garrison was a humble person who always insisted on sharing credit whenever he was praised. I wish he were here now to protest, saying that our new building was the result of the work of many people, and that our department is where we are today because the faculty and staff have made it that way. True, true, Garrison, but these things do not happen without great leadership. We thank you, and we will always remember you with much love, respect, and gratitude.

Historic Advertisements from Duke Library: Ad*Access and Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920

2011-12-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Looking for visual inspiration from advertising? Check out two collections from Duke Library: Ad*Access, which offers over 7,000 images of U.S. and Canadian advertisements dating between 1911 and 1955, and Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920, featuring over 9,000 images relating to the early history of advertising in the United States.

Ad*Access
The main categories are Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II Propaganda. You can also browse and searchby Company,Product,Date,Publication,Subject,Medium,Headline, andAudience.

Note the section on Copyright and Citation. Most of these advertisements were published after 1923, which means they are still protected by copyright. Under the fair use exemption to copyright, Duke makes them available to you for use in research, teaching, and private study, on the condition that you provide proper attribution of the source in all copies. You must seek permission for other uses. Detailed information on how to properly cite and seek permission to use these images is provided on this page.

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920
Browse the collection by Company,Product,Date,Format, Publication,Subject,Medium,and Headline.

As with Ad*Access there is a Copyright and Citation page, with an explanation that these images are available for your use in research, teaching, and private study. While it's arguable that Duke cannot claim copyright to these pre-1923 images, and therefore cannot require permission for other uses (such as publication), it is certainly good form to contact them before doing so.

Little Guides from JISC Digital Media

2011-12-06T07:45:00.001-07:00

JISC Digital Media has created a series of Little Guides in response to frequently asked questions. Perhaps of most interest to our readers is The Little Guide to Finding Digital Media Resources (PDF). This guide includes links to JISC's online tutorials on searching the Internet for images, audio resources, and video and moving images, as well as links to general sites with a focus on free-to-use and low-cost media resources.

Other JISC Little Guides address Copyright, Cloud Computing, Podcasting, and Screencasting.

In general, JISC Digital Media provides a wealth of helpful information for those in higher education anywhere, but do keep in mind that JISC is a service aimed at a UK audience. Some of the resources cited here are slanted in this direction.

Image: Ryan Thompson (Warmest Regards), consulting the guide books, 2010. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Copyright, Fair Use, and Online Images

2011-11-30T07:38:00.001-07:00

A recent conversation with someone in the Art and Art History department reminded me that confusion over the online use of copyrighted images persists, even among some faculty members. This really comes as no surprise. Copyright is complex, the parameters of fair use are murky, and the fair use of digital images require us to consider elements that didn't exist when the Copyright Act of 1976 was passed. It's a mystifying topic for most of us. Over at the Social Media Examiner, Sara Hawkins has written a very helpful piece, Copyright Fair Use and How it Works for Online Images. As an attorney, Hawkins is well versed on this subject, and here she provides an excellent overview of the issues that we should consider before using others' images online.

While brief, the article does a great job of introducing this complicated subject. After discussing key points about copyright and fair use, Hawkins outlines "5 Things to Think About Before Using Copyrighted Images":

Do you understand the term fair use?
Why are you using the image?
Have you transformed the image?
How much of the image are you using?
Are you willing to risk your site being taken down, getting a cease and desist/bill/DMCA or being sued?

In summary Hawkins notes,"When it comes to photos, when in doubt, assume it’s subject to copyright and don’t use it without the appropriate permission." Check out the article -- it's rare to find such a straightforward and clear introduction to this topic.

Image: Jason Pettus (jasonpettus), mytatt.jpg, 2007, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Historical Medical Images Online

2011-10-04T07:34:00.001-06:00

A graduate student recently asked me about where she might find historical medical images online. I am posting these resources here because this is a recurring topic of interest among faculty and students in both art history and studio arts. Do you have other suggestions? Please share them with us.

Wellcome Images
Over 40,000 current and historical medical images; "Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science." Explore Wellcome images here.

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM)
"Provides access to nearly 70,000 images in the collections of the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM)." Search for IHM images here.

Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration (New York Public Library)
"Hundreds of images from the thirteenth through the early twentieth century, in the fields of astronomy, chemistry, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics, as represented by manuscript illuminations, engravings, lithographs, and photographs." Discover Pictures of Science images from the NYPL Digital Gallery here.

Historical Medical Poster Collection (Yale's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library)
"The collection ranges from large size posters meant to be pasted on the sides of buildings and viewed from afar to small glossy placards designed for store windows...The collection focuses primarily on public health communications, but also has examples of medical product advertising, recruiting, and aid and relief solicitations." Find images from the Historical Medical Poster Collection here.

Image: Clemente Susini, Wax anatomical figure of reclining woman, 1771-1800, Florence.Science Museum, London, Wellcome Image. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Christian Iconography from Augusta State University

2011-09-22T07:36:00.000-06:00

Who's that woman holding the cloth depicting an image of Christ? If you have ever found yourself wondering who is featured in a particular scene from a medieval or early modern work of art , Christian Iconography could be a valuable resource. From Augusta State University, this work-in-progress is intended "to support the study of Christian iconography at the beginner's level." Its taglines are "Learn how to identify the saints in medieval and renaissance art. Read the stories that the paintings refer to. Find out the 'why' behind traditional elements in paintings of scriptural events."

You can enter a keyword to search for a particular iconographical element, or you can explore links on specific saints, topics, or selected scriptural events which are divided alphabetically. Each of these is illustrated by one or more images. There are also links to other sites useful in the study of Christian iconography, as well as a bibliography of recommended readings.

Image: euthman (Ed Uthman), Hans Memling: St. Veronica, c. 1470/1475, 2009. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

Delicious: A Resurrection Ahead for Social Bookmarks?

2011-09-12T21:51:00.003-06:00

If you've seen the VRC's bookmarks over at Delicious you know that we have assembled over a thousand bookmarks from Web sites pertaining to art, architecture, archaeology, museums, images, and related information resources. We have tagged these links with labels to help you navigate through them and find sites of interest. And more importantly, we are not alone -- over 5 million other individuals and organizations have bookmarked and tagged almost 200 million sites. Pick just about any topic and Delicious can lead you to new online resources, and to other users with similar interests who have publicly shared their bookmarks.

So far so good. But a troubling development came to light last year. A leak at Yahoo!, which had acquired Delicious in 2005 and had done little since to develop its potential, indicated that the service was to be "sunsetted," which many interpreted as "to be shut down." Yahoo! publicly declared that this meant that they would be selling Delicious, rather than ending it. But many users by now had decided that investing time in social bookmarking at Delicious was a risky endeavor. Many accounts, including the VRC's, were left in a holding pattern until the dust settled.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust aside, Delicious was acquired in April by AVOS Systems, a company founded by the creators of YouTube. As reported in a New York Times piece today, these entrepreneurs are now using their expertise to breath new life into Delicious. Among their goals is greater ease of use and broader adoption. These will be fueled by the collective desire for better control of the torrential flow of information that we all experience. As Chad Hurley states, “We want to simplify things visually, mainstream the product and make it easier for people to understand what they’re doing." We look forward to watching the developments at Delicious, and resuming our bookmarking activities soon. Stay tuned!

Image: Daniel Andrlik (mointrigue), Delicious Is Dead, 2010, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

VRC Bombay TV 2 Video

2011-09-08T19:26:00.002-06:00

To illustrate some of the ways we help our faculty and students, and also to show that we do our jobs with humor while striving for excellent services and products, the VRC has created a very short and hopefully entertaining video about our scanning services. We used Bombay TV 2, a site offering a selection of clips from vintage Bollywood movies, which you can choose, arrange into a sequence, and provide subtitles to create your own movie. See the video here:

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/v2/play.php?id=152979

But seriously, if you are faculty member or student in the Department of Art and Art History, please ask us how we can make your life easier. Scanning? Training? Equipment? If you are in need of a service or equipment item that we don't currently offer but which fits within our mission -- to provide and facilitate access to images, imaging, and related information resources for teaching and research -- we would like to hear about it.

Disclaimer: No faculty members, students, or Bollywood stars were harmed in the making of this video. All characters are fictional; any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidence and unintended (except the guy who gets thrown through the plate glass window -- that really happened!). The VRC welcomes discourse about the representation of American academic problems as expressed through the representation of an Other culture, namely that of upper-class 1970s Mumbai, which itself is represented here through the lens of 1970s Hindi cinema. Similarly, we invite the discussion of any post-colonial ethical issues that may be called into question by framing this presentation with humor, or questions arising from the androcentric positioning of an aggressive male protagonist who is assisted entirely by female characters -- especially if these discussions occur over lattes.

Are Your Images Safe?

2011-08-31T07:03:00.002-06:00

The VRC has returned from our all-too-short summer break -- welcome back! I'd like to kick off the new school year with a cautionary tale. This July my brother's and sister-in-law's home was flooded, destroying the family computer. They did have an automatic backup system in place, saving regularly to an external hard drive. However, the hard drive was also destroyed in the flood. Fortunately, they periodically saved data to DVDs and stored them elsewhere, but the family lost all of the information on the computer that had been created since the last backup.

Many of us invest a significant amount of time, energy, and money in creating, collecting, and storing our images: they support our professional activities and function as an archive for our most treasured memories. Have you thought carefully about the ways that yours are vulnerable?

I have written about backup strategies before. Backups are a very important aspect of ensuring the ongoing safety and accessibility of your images. But there are other factors to consider, such as methods of organizing, file naming, migrating, and monitoring both your collection and developments in technology, products, and standards. SaveMyMemories.org is a nice site that provides a layperson's introduction to developing a strategy for curating your collection of personal images. Its main categories are:

Learn (hardware; software; other factors)
Prepare (plan; create categories; label photos; manage photos)
Protect (transfer to storage; make backup plan; how to backup)
Recover (camera card failure; hard drive crash; virus attack)
Resources (provides lots of links, organized into categories, to important sources for more information)

The VRC is always happy to discuss issues, share resources, and learn about new resources to better serve the needs of our faculty members' and students' personal image collections. Drop us a line and tell us what's on your mind!

Image: Rachel Zack, Mom, 2007. From Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

YouTube Now Lets You Search for and Assign Creative Commons Licenses

2011-06-13T07:34:00.000-06:00

Creators and remixers now have have a great new option to share and play with content, without worrying about copyright. YouTube has introduced a feature in its Video Editor that allows users to assign a Creative Commons license (CC-BY) to their videos. To mark videos with a CC license, simply click the radio button labeled "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" at the time of uploading, or go to My Videos, select edit for the video for which you wish to assign the CC license, scroll down to Broadcasting and Sharing Options, and select the CC option.

Those wishing to find content they may use under a CC license can find it in the Video Editor by simply clicking the CC tab at the top of the page. You can conduct a keyword search, with only CC-licensed videos appearing among the search results. To add a video to your storyboard, click on the 'plus' symbol (+) and remix away!

For more information, including important details about the rights and responsibilities involved, see YouTube's page on Creative Commons. You can view the terms of the CC-BY license at the Creative Commons Web site.

Internet Archive: A Rich Source of Video, Audio, Text, and More

2011-05-24T07:18:00.000-06:00

Have you gotten lost in the Internet Archive yet? It's non-profit "digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form," which features a huge array video, audio, text, and other items of potential interest to both artists and scholars alike. The site offers so much that it's difficult to do justice to it in a brief blog post. Its main offerings are divided into the Wayback Machine (over 150 billion archived web pages), Moving Images, Texts, Audio, and Software. You can conduct keyword and advanced searches across the entire archive, or browse by various sub-collections. Explore the reviews, spotlight items, most downloaded items, and staff picks. Below is a brief overview of each of the main Internet Archive areas.

Wayback Machine
"Browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible."

Moving Images
"This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download." The sub-collections are Animation & Cartoons, Arts & Music, Community Video, Computers & Technology, Cultural & Academic Films, Ephemeral Films, Movies, News & Public Affairs, Prelinger Archives, Spirituality & Religion, Sports Videos , Television, Videogame Videos, Vlogs, and Youth Media.

Texts
"Contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books." This comprises almost 3 million digitized items, including a lot of great vintage and historical texts. These can be read online or downloaded to your computer. The sub-collections are American Libraries, Canadian Libraries, Universal Library, Community Texts, Project Gutenberg, Children's Library, Biodiversity Heritage Library, and Additional Collections.

Audio
"Contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download." The sub-collections are Audio Books & Poetry, Community Audio, Computers & Technology, The Grateful Dead, Live Music Archive, Music & Arts, Netlabels, News & Public Affairs, Non-English Audio, Radio Programs, and Spirituality & Religion.

Software
"The Software Archive is designed to preserve and provide access to all kinds of rare or difficult to find, legally downloadable software titles and background information on those titles. The collection includes a broad range of software related materials including shareware, freeware, video news releases about software titles, speed runs of actual software game play, previews and promos for software games, high-score and skill replays of various game genres, and the art of filmmaking with real-time computer game engines." The sub-collections are Game Patches, 301Works.org, DigiBarn, CD Bulletin Board Software Archive, Infochimps, Open Source Software, and Tucows Software Library.

Europeana: 15 Million Images, Videos, Audio Files, and Texts

2011-04-07T07:10:00.000-06:00

If you have not yet visited Europeana, here's your chance to "study abroad." Europeana is a an impressive digital library of over 15 million items from 1500 museums, archives, libraries, and other organizations representing the cultural and scientific heritage of Europe. As described on their about us page, these items include:

Images - paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects
Texts - books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers
Sounds - music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts
Videos - films, newsreels and TV broadcasts

After conducting a basic or advanced search, search results are presented as a mix of all of these object types, but you can choose from Images, Videos, or Sounds tabs to examine those types in particular. You can also refine your search by provider, country, language, type, dates, or rights.

If you register for an account you can save your searches, save particular items, or save tags.

Safeguard Your Wireless Security

2011-02-22T07:31:00.017-07:00

Do you use wireless Internet connections at coffee shops, airports, hotels, or at home? If so you should be concerned about about the security of your personal information. Hacking is getting much easier, and new tools, such as the free Firefox add-on Firesheep, allow people with comparatively little expertise to very easily observe your online movements. A recent article in the New York Times, New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users, provides a great overview of both the threats to your private data and the actions you can take to protect yourself. I encourage you to read the article for more detailed information, but here are some important points:

HTTPS is an encryption method offered by many Web sites, but many do not provide "end-to-end" encryption, meaning that while your password may be protected as you enter a site, your privacy is vulnerable thereafter. The article points to another free Firefox extension, called HTTPS Everywhere, which makes HTTPS the default on Web sites that offer HTTPS as an encryption method. However, this only works with sites that offer HTTPS. A small lock visible in the corner of your browser or within the address bar ensures that your connection is encrypted.

A good rule of thumb noted in the article is to avoid doing anything online with sensitive data in public places. One should also take steps to bolster the security of your home wireless network, which is susceptible to hackers with inexpensive Wi-Fi antennas that can detect signals from home networks two to three miles away. It's wise to select a long and complex alphanumeric password and change the default router name of your home wireless network.

VPN (Virtual Private Network) can encrypt all wireless communications at home or in public places. There are both subscription-based and free versions, although the latter tend to provide more limited protection. If you are a member of the CU-Boulder community, you may freely use the campus VPN service. It encrypts your traffic as it is routed to the campus VPN server, and is unencrypted after that. If you are sitting in a coffee shop and connect through the CU-Boulder VPN, you have some protection from nearby prying Firesheep eyes. This is better than nothing -- it's worth noting that over a million people have downloaded Firesheep since its release just over three months ago.

Image: David Pham, iStillness, 2006. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Once Again, Privacy Settings on Facebook

2011-02-08T22:15:00.002-07:00

As you may know, Facebook's privacy settings have changed from time to time in recent years. Do you know exactly what information you are currently sharing with whom, both within and outside of Facebook? If you haven't reviewed your settings for a while, it's worth spending just a few minutes looking them over and make adjustments as necessary. Over at Mashable, Stan Schroeder just shared a must-read post on privacy for Facebook users: Facebook Privacy : 10 Settings Every User Needs to Know.

The topics that Schroeder covers, accompanied by screen shots and easy, step-by-step instructions, are:

1. Sharing on Facebook
2. Existing Photos
3. Checking In to Places
4. Connecting on Facebook
5. Apps You Use
6. Instant Personalization
7. Info Accessible to Your Friends
8. Public Search
9. Friend Lists
10. Enabling HTTPS

Image: Jeremy Brooks, Private, 2008. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

Google Art Project: 'Street View' for Museums Plus Artworks in High Resolution

2011-02-01T07:43:00.002-07:00

Today Google announced the launch of Google Art Project, an exciting development for anyone interested in art or art museums. From the Official Google Blog: "You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums."

To get started, just choose a museum from the home page and then select ‘View Artwork’ or ‘Explore the Museum'. From there you can use the drop-down menus at the upper left of the page to select a museum (box on left) or choose among the artworks within a given museum (box on right). You can virtually explore selected portions of museum spaces in 'Street View' mode with the ‘Explore the Museum' option -- note that the resolution in this mode is not particularly high. But in the ‘View Artwork’ mode you can zoom into lovely detail views, and even enjoy truly magnificent, super-high resolution, gigapixel details among selected images (indicated by a 'plus' symbol on the list of artworks).

Note the 'i' button at the top right of the page, which provides valuable information about the selected museum (Web site, floor plan, Google Maps location, museum history, and more works in the museum) or the selected artwork (such as viewing notes, additional artwork information, artwork history, tags, artist information, more works by the artist, and more works in the museum).

Finally, you can also ‘Create an Artwork Collection,’ where you can save and share specific views and comments on any of the 1000+ artworks included in Google Art Project. Note that FAQs can be found here.

The participating museums currently are:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
National Gallery, London - UK
Palace of Versailles - France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
Tate Britain, London - UK
Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

While it current state is impressive, the relatively small number of museums and artworks is immediately obvious. It is exciting to imagine what this could become in time, with more contributions from these and other institutions around the world. While you can't beat viewing artworks in person, it is not possible for most of us to visit all of the museums that pique our interest. Further collaboration between Google and museums will make more cultural objects accessible to many more people, which will ideally inspire more museum visits and overall support for museums.

Get More Out of Your Digital Camera

2011-01-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Do you have a new digital camera? Have you been using your digital camera for a while but feeling like you could get more out of it? Darren Rowse's compilation of 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know is a great place to start. Even if you are an experienced photographer, there are tips here worth reviewing. Included are Aperture and Shutter Priority Mode, Introduction to White Balance, Automatic Exposure Bracketing, How to Take Sharp Digital Images, How to Get Shallow Depth of Field in Your Digital Photos, Understanding Exposure, The Rule of Thirds, and many others. If you think "histograms are scary," this article is for you -- it will demystify your camera and help you create much better images.

Image: Kris Krüg, kim cathers, 2007. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Archive Raiders: Photographing Library and Archive Materials

2010-12-11T09:34:00.001-07:00

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)

2010-12-08T20:17:00.001-07:00

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

2010-12-01T07:45:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-11-30T07:41:00.005-07:00

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

2010-11-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-20T09:20:00.002-07:00

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

2010-11-10T07:39:00.003-07:00

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

2010-10-26T07:49:00.002-06:00

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

2010-10-12T07:48:00.001-06:00

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

2010-10-09T09:30:00.019-06:00

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

2010-09-30T06:47:00.004-06:00

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?

2010-09-29T07:10:00.002-06:00

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

2010-09-16T07:38:00.001-06:00

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

2010-09-01T07:37:00.003-06:00

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!

2010-08-20T07:49:00.001-06:00

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

2010-08-10T07:41:00.000-06:00

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

2010-08-04T05:52:00.000-06:00

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

2010-08-03T07:36:00.001-06:00

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

2010-06-27T07:24:00.000-06:00

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

2010-06-23T07:23:00.000-06:00

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

2010-06-15T17:37:00.002-06:00

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

2010-06-11T17:07:00.000-06:00

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

2010-06-09T17:38:00.000-06:00

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

2010-06-08T07:25:00.005-06:00

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

2010-06-02T17:18:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-31T09:58:00.006-06:00

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

2010-05-26T07:34:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-23T09:51:00.001-06:00

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

2010-05-17T06:38:00.001-06:00

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.

Log into your ARTstor account and open an image group containing 100 or fewer images.
Above the image group thumbnails, towards the right side of the screen you will see the export to PowerPoint button (). Click this.
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.
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.
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

2010-05-13T07:16:00.003-06:00

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

2010-05-12T07:10:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-02T08:37:00.006-06:00

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

2010-04-15T09:05:00.001-06:00

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

2010-04-05T17:10:00.002-06:00

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

2010-04-04T17:15:00.001-06:00

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...

2010-03-30T20:35:00.003-06:00

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

2010-03-25T19:38:00.000-06:00

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

2010-03-22T07:47:00.000-06:00

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

2010-03-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-09T06:54:00.005-07:00

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

2010-03-02T07:49:00.002-07:00

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

2010-03-01T12:39:00.004-07:00

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

2010-02-23T19:00:00.004-07:00

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

2010-02-19T10:17:00.002-07:00

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

2010-02-12T18:05:00.005-07:00

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.

ARTstor Travel Awards 2010

2010-02-04T07:48:00.001-07:00

ARTstor is offering travel awards to support educational and scholarly activities in the amount of $1,500 each to graduate students, scholars, curators, educators, and librarians in any field in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences.

From the ARTstor Web site: "To be considered for a research travel award, applicants must create and submit an ARTstor image group (or a series of image groups) and a single accompanying essay that creatively and compellingly demonstrates why the image group(s) is useful for teaching, research, or scholarship. The five winning submissions will be determined by ARTstor staff. These submissions will help ARTstor to understand better the uses that scholars and teachers are making of ARTstor's content and tools and will provide us with insights into how we can continue to improve our efforts to serve the educational community."

Applicants must be affiliated with an ARTstor subscribing institution. The deadline to apply is April 1, 2010. Winners will be announced May 1, 2010. Awards will be made by June 1, 2010 ( awards are to be used by September 1, 2011). For more information, rules, and application instructions, see the ARTstor Web site.

Image: nhanusek, Luggage, 2006. From Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

Our New Home in the Visual Arts Complex!

2010-01-31T18:05:00.004-07:00

The VRC is thrilled to report that we have finally finished our move and (mostly) finished unpacking in our new facilities in the brand new Visual Arts Complex (VAC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder! The building is so new that it is still actually a construction site. But the semester has begun, ready or not, and we are back in the blogging saddle. Yeehaw!

There will be a dedication ceremony for the VAC next September, by which time the new CU Art Museum will also be open and there will be landscaping and other finishing touches to help the place look more lived in. We are very excited to finally be home after many years of planning, packing, moving, living in a temporary location while the old building was demolished and the new VAC was constructed, packing again, and moving again. Everyone in the department will be settling in for some time to come, but it's really great to see art production and scholarship happening right now in our new space. You can see more pictures from the first two weeks of the semester on the VRC's Flickr Group page.

We are very happy with our new Visual Resources Center facilities. We have ample space for our public scanning stations and a separate room with a service window for equipment checkout. Soon we will be able to focus our attention on the large task of methodically going through the slide collection (400,000 slides) and, with our faculty's help, deciding which of the images should be set aside for scanning and which can be disposed of. In time, we plan to use this room as a space for teaching workshops for members of the department.

ARTstor's Offline Image Viewer

2009-11-14T07:45:00.001-07:00

ARTstor has just released an updated version of the Offline Image Viewer (OIV) for Macs, which is compatible with the new Snow Leopard operating system. If you are not familiar with ARTstor's OIV, it is a very nice piece of (free) software that allows ARTstor users to present high-resolution images from ARTstor's digital library in combination with personal images. Akin to PowerPoint, the OIV is a more streamlined program intended for image presentations specifically. Once you have imported your images into a presentation, you can choose to share them in a very quick and simple mode by double clicking on the first image in the Image Palette section. Or you may wish to create authored slides with titles and other text, details, side by side comparisons, etc. In either mode you can choose to zoom and pan on the fly during presentations. Image groups downloaded from ARTstor into the OIV travel with their descriptive data, which your can refer to and use in different ways when preparing and presenting the images. You can also import existing PowerPoint presentations into the OIV. Of course, if you prefer another presentation tool, such as PowerPoint or Keynote, ARTstor does allow screen-sized downloads of the vast majority of its images.

ARTstor users may download the OIV by registering for a personal account in ARTstor. When logged in go to Tools > Download offline presentation tool. If you are downloading the updated version for Macs, please note that ARTstor recommends that you uninstall the previous version before downloading and installing the updated version.

For more information about the OIV, have a look at ARTstor's help section. The VRC also encourages faculty and students in the Department of Art and Art History to ask us questions anytime.

Rhizome's ArtBase

2009-11-11T07:33:00.002-07:00

If you're interested in new media art, be sure to check out Rhizome's ArtBase. This growing online collection currently showcases over 2,500 works dating back to 1997. Rhizome is the eminent new media arts organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. It defines new media art as "contemporary art that uses emerging technologies in significant ways." These works include net art, software art, computer games, and documentation of new media performance and installation.

You can browse the latest additions on the ArtBase home page, and also browse the entire collection by artist, title, keyword, or date. Rhizome is currently working on a redesign for ArtBase, and welcomes suggestions via an o nline survey.

The ArtBase selection criteria include that works are "of potential historical significance." The curatorial staff evaluates this by looking at:

the work's aesthetic innovation, conceptual sophistication or political impact
the work's relevance to the discourse of new media art
any discussion of the work itself on Rhizome.org or other relevant networks or publications
the work's place in the artist or artists' oeuvre
the work's provenance, including commissions, exhibitions and collections

ArtBase features work by our department's own Mark Amerika, as well as a number of other artists with ties to the CU-Boulder Department of Art and Art History, such as Rick Silva, Timothy Weaver, Michael Arnold Mages, and Joseph Farbrook.

Image: Scott Hessels, The Image Mill: Sustainable Cinema #1, 2009. Photo by Joel Swierenga. Featured in ArtBase.

The App Garden at Flickr

2009-11-05T07:28:00.003-07:00

The hugely popular photo sharing site Flickr has reconfigured its Services page as the The App Garden, a directory of applications built by external developers. These applications access Flickr images and features (such as tags and groups), and present them in novel ways. I've mentioned a few of these before (here, here, and here, for example). Now you can browse a growing number of these tools in the Apps We've Noticed section, or explore them with tags or keyword searches. There is also information about developers and for developers interested in creating these third-party applications.

Flickr provides its open API (application program interface) to developers so they can approach Flickr content in new and creative ways. Some cool examples I discovered in my visit to the App garden are Downloadr, for downloading batches of Flickr images at the largest size designated by their creators; Bookr, for creating photobooks using Flickr images; and Flickriver, for viewing a seamless stream of photos on a black background, without having to hit 'next' to reload the next page. If you are a Flickr user you'll find it worthwhile to spend a little time poking around The App Garden -- you are sure to discover something useful.

VideoSurf: New Tools in Video Search Technology

2009-11-04T07:16:00.011-07:00

Who hasn't been frustrated from time to time by searching for videos on sites like YouTube, then having to repeat those fruitless searches on other sites? Text tags are often insufficient for locating the material you seek. There are frequently duplicate results, not to mention increasing amounts of spam to wade through. Video searching is a challenge that a number of start-up companies have been attempting to solve. One exciting example is VideoSurf, which is a metasearch engine that lets you find videos with a single query from a variety of sources (YouTube, Hulu, Metacafe, Yahoo! Video, Fancast, Comedy Central, and many more). Still in beta, it's VideoSurf's ability to see inside videos which is its most promising feature. It can see clips frame by frame, and with its facial recognition technology VideoSurf can return results that a text search alone wouldn't find. When you conduct a search in VideoSurf, each result is displayed with a sequence of thumbnails from the clip. You can select a thumbnail to start the video at that point. It also minimizes duplicate results by recognizing and grouping them, and has the ability to detect spam videos.

Turning the Pages at the British Library

2009-10-21T07:49:00.001-06:00

Have you ever been frustrated by the glass separating you and a rare book in a display case? Then you will appreciate that the British Library makes a number of its most important books available online with its interactive Turning the Pages technology. This simulates the experience of actually flipping through the books page by page. Choose from titles such as Vesalius's famous anatomy treatise, de Humanis corporis fabrica; Simon Bening's fifteenth-century Flemish manuscript, the Golf Book; William Blake's notebook; Leonardo's Codex Arundel; and many more. The impressive viewing tool offers features that allow you to zoom, pan, rotate, view annotations, and listen to audio information. Depending on your computer's operating system, you may be prompted to download a free and quick plug-in to use the Turning the Pages software.

The British Library's Turning the Pages software is also used by a increasing number of other libraries around the world, including the National Library of Medicine, the Wellcome Library, and the Natural History Museum. Good news for students and scholars, who might have access to much of the content in other formats, but without the cohesive context provided by these virtual book experiences.

Image: Depictions of the noble house Zion with its parterres, ponds, gardens and woods belonging to the well and noble-born lord, the lord of Hogendorp, Receiver General of the United Netherlands, Bailiff and Dikegraf of the town and barony of Steenbergen etc., Dutch Baroque Gardens, 1718-1748. From Turning the Pages, the British Library.

Request VRC images

2009-10-19T07:12:00.001-06:00

Are you a student or faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History in need of digital images? If you have checked ARTstor and the CU Digital Library to no avail, the Visual Resources Center can help. We can scan images from published sources such as books and journals under the fair use provision of US copyright law. Images that we scan are cataloged and made available in our digital image collection. While the VRC prefers a two-week turnaround with a maximum of 40 images per two-week period, we will do our best to accommodate rush orders. See our Web site for more information. If you only have a few images, we can likely help with a day or two's notice. For the DIY crowd, we also have self-serve scanning stations in our facility, with training available by appointment.

The VRC licenses images from vendors whenever possible. Purchasing images offers several significant advantages: superior quality, support for the marketplace, and relative ease of in-house processing. Scholars Resource is a consortium of many vendors who make their images available in a single place -- have a look at their wide variety of content and let us know if you have a purchase request!

University of Colorado Digital Library

2009-10-16T07:30:00.001-06:00

The University of Colorado Digital Library (CU-DL) is a teaching and research resource which has evolved from the collaboration of libraries and academic units across the CU system. The University Libraries provides open access to its growing collections, such as Once Upon a Time: Historical and Illustrated Fairy Tales, Aerial Photographs of Colorado, and the Publishers' Bindings Collection. The College of Architecture and Planning's Colorado Architecture Collection is also available to all. Current students and faculty at CU who seek images of other images of art, architecture, and related visual culture may visit the collections provided by the Department of Art and Art History, the College of Arts and Media, and the College of Architecture and Planning. Due to copyright access to these collections is limited to the CU community.

In addition to the collections created at the University of Colorado, the CU-DL provides access to numerous other collections housed in the same software platform, which is Luna Imaging's Insight. These include the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, the Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection, the John Carter Brown Library Archive of Early American Images, the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, and many more.

accessCeramics

2009-10-13T07:23:00.000-06:00

Looking for nice images of contemporary ceramics by recognized artists? Check out the growing collection at accessCeramics. A collaborative pilot project at Lewis & Clark College, it was created by the Visual Resources Collection of Watzek Library and the Art Department. It is "designed for use by artists, arts educators, scholars and the general public, and is intended to fill a void in contemporary ceramics digital image collections on the web." Juried submissions are available through Flickr pages and through the accessCeramics Web site, where access is enhanced by descriptive metadata which allow browsing and searching by artist, glazing/surface, material, object type, technique, and temperature. There are currently 151 artists contributing 2,464 images, numbers which will continue to grow in the coming months and years. Those of you with ties to the Department of Art and Art History at CU-Boulder may recognize the work of Tsehai Johnson and Jessica Knapp. Of course our department boasts many great ceramic talents, both current faculty and alumni, who are all encouraged to submit their work to accessCeramics. This is a fantastic example of academic innovation and collaboration, which over time will only become more useful as a research and teaching tool.

Image: Jessica Knapp, Memorial Wreath (detail), 2007. From accessCeramics, also available on Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

Every Van Gogh Letter Now Available Online

2009-10-11T07:34:00.001-06:00

All 902 surviving letters to and from Vincent van Gogh are now available in a database online at Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. This incredible resource is the result of a collaboration over many years between the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute. In addition to keyword and advanced searches, one can browse by period, correspondent, place, or by those letters which include sketches. The page for each letter includes two columns, each containing the same set of information for easy comparisons: tabs with the original text transcribed; the option to view the text with numbered line endings; a facsimile with a link to detailed information about its physical description; an English translation; scholarly notes; and artworks by Van Gogh and others referred to within that letter. Clicking on the facsimile opens a viewer window where one can zoom into close detail on each folio.

The powerful advanced search feature allows you to search by some predictable parameters such as date, correspondent, and location. It also provides the opportunity to search by person, literature, work of art, and bible reference mentioned in the letters -- entering the first three letters of a search term prompts a list to appear from which you can select your search term.

The site contains a large amount of contextual information, with biographical and historical backgrounds, a chronology, concordance, bibliography, glossary, maps, and much more. Those wishing to make the most of this resource will want to spend a few minutes with the very useful Quick guide. Anyone with an interest in Van Gogh or digital libraries will be impressed and inspired by this site, which was launched in conjunction with the exhibition Van Gogh's Letters: The Artist Speaks. Kudos to the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute!

Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG)

2009-10-10T09:37:00.003-06:00

Digital photographers, image managers, artists, instructors who teach with digital images, and various commercial and non-profit entities who solicit digital image submissions all care about the quality and consistency of digital images as they transfer among devices, formats, and platforms. The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG) working group maintains excellent information for all of these interested parties. This group, a consortium of digital imaging professionals, related trade groups, and manufacturers, exists to promote international standards and best practices in digital imaging. The UPDIG guidelines are available in PDF or HTML format, and address digital asset management, color profiling, metadata, and photography workflow (note that UPDIG recommends the PDF files for their superior formatting and readability).

The Universal Quick Guide is an introductory overview on color management, monitor calibration, color space, resolution, file formats, file naming, sharpening, embedded metadata, file delivery, CMYK guide prints and verifiable proofs, archiving, and digital imaging workflow. The Photographers Guidelines explore these topics in much greater depth.

The Image Receivers Guidelines exist to address the common problem of inconsistency in digital image submissions. As noted in the "about" section of the document, "while end users usually have specific criteria for image submission, they often lack clear, consistent terminology for communicating those guidelines. As a result, photographers submit digital images in a variety of image formats, with various resolutions, camera types, color profiles, metadata schemas, sharpening and tonal correction." This document intends to help those who accept image submissions establish specific guidelines, with a recommendation for presenting a checklist based on best practices contained in the report.

Image: Dashitnow, Green Photographer, 2008. From Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

AlternativeTo: Find Free Software Alternatives

2009-10-02T22:40:00.004-06:00

Looking for free alternatives to Photoshop, Microsoft Office, or Dreamweaver? The site AlternativeTo makes it easy to find a wide variety of replacements for these and many more commercial software packages.

One can limit searches to programs available for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems, or online platforms if preferred. One can also browse by "most views," "most likes," recent additions, or applications waiting for alternatives suggestions. Conducting a search on a specific program yields a description of the key features of that software, accompanied by a list of its alternatives.

AlternativeTo is continually updated with user-generated suggestions, comments, and votes. Alternatives to a particular software selection are listed in order of user community "likes," with links to user comments where available. As a user, you are invited to "get involved" by suggesting your own alternatives to an application or suggesting changes to the application's entry. This is a wonderful and very useful example of the ReadWrite Web!

Localize Your Flickr Images and Search for Others

2009-10-01T19:12:00.002-06:00

Loc.alize.us is an easily installed, free bookmarklet "that enables mapping, geocoding and geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page." A bookmarklet is a small program you can keep in your browser's bookmarks or post in a Web page. Geocoding is providing geographic data, such as latitude and longitude or place names, to maps and other items. Geotagging is assigning these kinds of data to files like photographs and videos. Loc.a.lize.us combines these technologies with Google Maps' API (application program interface) to let you geotag your images so that others can see where the photographs were taken. The localize bookmarklet is available here. Once you have saved the bookmarklet to your browser, simply:

1) open one of your Flickr photos
2) click on the bookmarklet in your browser menu
3) click on "Search Place"
4) enter a location and voilà, your image is geotagged.

You can also search for everyone's geotagged images in a Google Maps interface at the loc.alize.us Web site.

From the developer, here are the key features of the bookmarklet:

Place Search: Find your places all around the world.
Address Search: Street-level accuracy for US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan.
Fast Google Map Interface: Smooth zoom, large controls, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
Fullscreen mode: Explore our world with maximum browser space.
Link in Description: Let others see where your pictures were taken.
Remember location: Your last saved view will be stored for later geotagging.
Map everyone's photos: Run the bookmarklet on geotagged photos from your friends.
Shortcut GeoCoder: Try searching for "nyc" or "10101".
Longitude/Latatide input: Map values like "N 40°45', W 73°59'" or "40.75, -73.98".
EXIF data extraction: Auto transform of GPS injected data.

and the key features of the Web site:

Tag Cloud: Filter results by specific topics.
Find People: See where your or your friends have been.
Place Search: Find any place all around the world.
Fast Map Interface: Smooth zoom, map/satellite/hybrid mode.
Full screen Preview: See your photos in high quality.
Shareable URLs: Copy and send dynamic anchors

JISC Posts New Guides to Moving Images

2009-09-29T07:08:00.009-06:00

JISC has just shared three new video guides: the Basic Guide to Videoing Interviews, the Basic Guide to Videoing Lectures, and the Basic Guide to the Flip. These supplement the materials JISC already provides in its Advice on Moving Images page. Here you will find a wealth of information on creating, managing, finding, and using moving image resources. These include the Basic Guide to Shooting Video and many other sections on topics such as digital video file types, animated graphics, metadata, transcoding, digitization workflow, and online delivery options.

Image: Mika Hiironniemi, Video Shoot, 2008. From Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

World Digital Library

2009-09-22T20:29:00.000-06:00

The World Digital Library, launched in April of this year, is a project initiated by the Library of Congress in collaboration with UNESCO and a number of international partner institutions, companies, and foundations. An online collection representing cultural heritage from around the world, the WDL seeks to promote cross-cultural awareness and understanding. Over 30 contributing collections provide access to digital materials that include manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to open-ended searches, one can browse and narrow searches by place, time, topic, type of item, or contributing institution. Special features include "interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities."

Image: Detail from a nara-ehon manuscript, The Origin of Tenjin. Japanese, 1596-1615. From the World Digital Library.

New Features in ARTstor

2009-09-16T15:18:00.007-06:00

ARTstor has recently released some new features. From their announcements:

Save detail to image group
You will now see an icon in the ARTstor Image Viewer that allows you to zoom in and save a particular detail of an image to an image group. With this new feature, full views and multiple details of an image may appear together in any given group, as well as be exported for use in the Offline Image Viewer (OIV) or PowerPoint. This ability to save and share multiple views of the same image helps to meet the many teaching, research, and presentation needs of the ARTstor community. Learn more.

Nested folders
ARTstor has also enhanced the functionality of folders in the Digital Library. Instructor-level users can now create nested sub-folders that can be moved easily from one folder to another by dragging and dropping. For example, you may build draft versions of your image groups in a private folder and simply drag them to a public folder when they are ready to be shared. The addition of nested folders allows you to organize ARTstor content in ways that are meaningful and intuitive to you. Learn more.

Export to PowerPoint (Beta)
This feature is currently in Beta. It is only available to Instructor Level users at this time. Learn more about Instructor Privileges.

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 to proceed. In Beta testing this will be limited to 1000 images per 120 days.
4. A new window will appear with a progress bar as your PowerPoint2007 presentation file is generated. This may take several minutes, depending on the group size.
5. A new window will appear. Follow the prompts 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.

For more information about using these new features, please contact ARTstor's User Services team at userservices@artstor.org.

New Functionality in Google Image Search

2009-09-14T07:05:00.000-06:00

Google has been adding new functionality to its image searches. The "show options" link that appears with search results gives the user the opportunity to restrict searches on size, type, and color. Size now includes a broader range of options, from "medium" and "large," to "larger than" a range of pixel dimensions and megapixel sizes. It also allows the user to search for specific image size and proportion by entering precise pixel dimensions. Type choices comprise faces, photos, clip art, or line drawings. Color options include full color, black and white, or specific colors from a small menu of choices -- this yields image results which prominently feature shades of the selected color. This option, while a welcome development, is still primitive when compared to other online tools (see Idée's Multicolr Search Lab, for example).

The Advanced Image Search repeats most of this functionality (no color menu option), but additionally permits:

Content types: allows the user to find images from the news, in addition to faces, photos, clip art, and line drawings.
Aspect ratio: returns images with aspect ratios that are tall, square, wide, or panoramic.
Filetypes: yields image files formatted as JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP.
Domain: lets one search a particular site or domain.
Usage Rights: returns images that are labeled for reuse, including for commercial use with or without modification.

Contemporary Art in the VRC Image Collection

2009-09-11T17:30:00.012-06:00

The VRC digital image collection focuses on materials that relate to the curriculum of the Department of Art and Art History. In addition to images of works by our faculty, graduate students, and artists from the Visiting Artist Program, the VRC acquires other images related to our faculty's teaching and research interests -- specifically those that are difficult to obtain in other places. Recent additions to the collection include hundreds of images of contemporary art, with a special focus on sculpture and installations. The artists represented are too numerous to list, but sources for images include vendors and fair-use scans from books. Some examples of recent sources are:

Judith Collins, Sculpture Today (2007)
Hugh Davies, Blurring the Boundaries : Installation Art, 1969-1996 (1996)
Nicolas De Oliveira, Installation Art in the New Millennium (1999)
Jiehong Jiang and Saatchi Gallery, The Revolution Continues: New Art in China (2006)
La Biennale de Venezia, Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense (2007)
Whitney Museum of American Art, Biennial Exhibition (1997)
Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Thing: New Sculpture from Los Angeles (2005)

Stop by the VRC if you have questions about how to search for these kinds of materials effectively in our collection. We also welcome suggestions for our image collection from our faculty and students.

Photoshop Video Tutorials

2009-09-04T07:15:00.005-06:00

Perhaps you a foreign leader who needs to brush up on your Photoshop skills for some nationalistic propaganda. Maybe you work at the art desk of an advertising agency and would like to curtail your airbrush abuse or avoid unfortunate monstrosities. Or you might simply be interested in learning and experimenting with Photoshop tools. Hongkiat has just posted links to 56 Absolutely Brilliant and Intriguing Photoshop Video Tutorials at Hongkiat.com. The hyperbolic name and some very cheesy images and effects aside, you may find some good material here. These video tutorials are easy to follow, with topics that include How to Apply Texture to Uneven Surfaces, Gritty Photo Effect, Vanishing Objects with Clone Tool, and 53 more! But please use these skills wisely and responsibly. Just because you can simulate water droplets or create a burnt map effect, doesn't mean you should.

Image: Dave Cross, Gritty Photo Effect, from Planet Photoshop

Welcome, Meredith Kahn, new Art and Architecture Librarian at the University of Colorado

2009-09-02T17:54:00.004-06:00

The Visual Resources Center extends a very warm welcome to Meredith Kahn, the new Art & Architecture Research & Instruction Librarian with the University Libraries at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We are thrilled that Meredith, an alumna of our department and of the University of Michigan, has returned to Boulder. Meredith also happens to have been a graduate assistant in the VRC during her studies at CU, so we can personally vouch for her intelligence and dedication to the field. We know that she is going to continue with the tradition of excellence left by her predecessor, Jennifer Parker.

Meredith's position began yesterday (September 1st), and already she is busy with faculty requests for instruction. I asked Meredith to share a few words about her philosophy of reference and instruction, as well as what services and resources she offers to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students:

"My philosophy of reference and instruction... I see myself as a partner with students and faculty, helping to teach skills that can be adapted to a variety of research needs. I want to empower you so that you feel comfortable approaching both resources you're familiar with and things you've never used before. I also want you to feel comfortable asking for help. I'm here to help you, and I love doing it.

What can I do for...

--Faculty: help you with finding books, articles, and other resources; purchasing books for the collection to support teaching and research; providing in-class instruction to teach your students how to use all of the research resources available to them here at CU;

--Graduate students: helping you find books, articles, and other resources for your coursework, thesis, or project; discussing your research topics to help you find appropriate resources and focus your search for materials; purchasing books for the collection to support teaching and research; providing in-class instruction to teach your students how to use all of the research resources available to them here at CU;

--Undergraduate students: providing an overview of what's available to you here at CU (books, journals, electronic resources, etc.); teaching you how to use these resources effectively to improve your papers and projects; teaching you how to properly cite materials; helping you determine which resources will be most useful for your needs; showing you tips and tricks to save you time and energy.

In a nutshell, if there's something you need, I can help you find it. If we don't already own it, I can buy it. If there's something you don't know how to do, I can teach you. If you've got an idea for a paper or project, but don't know where to start, I'm happy to help.

You can always contact me via email (meredith.kahn@colorado.edu) or phone (303-492-3966, or 2-3966 on campus). Once I get settled in, I hope to start holding regular office hours. Also, I'll eventually be available via IM."

Meredith is going to be a fantastic resource to all members of our department. We are very fortunate that she is here, and the Visual Resources Center looks forward to further exploring the collaborative possibilities that exist between ourselves and the Libraries.

Welcome, Meredith!

New York Public Library's Digital Gallery

2009-08-30T10:12:00.006-06:00

The New York Public Library provides access to over 700,000 images digitized from the Library's holdings through its Digital Gallery. Items include illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs, illustrated books, postcards, and more. Contents may be browsed via the collections guides, broad subject categories (Arts & Literature; Cities & Buildings; Culture & Society; History & Geography; Industry & Technology; Nature & Science; and Printing & Graphics), Subjects, Names, and Library Divisions. Keyword and advanced search options are available.

Scholars and students across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences are sure to find materials of interest in the Digital Gallery. The diverse collections represented are too numerous to list here, but they include:

Africana & Black History
After Columbus: Four-hundred Years of Native American Portraiture
Changing New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, 1935-1938
Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900
Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913
Icons and Images of Cultures: Plate Books from the Russian Empire, Early Soviet Russia, and Eastern Europe, 1730-1935
Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts
The Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs
Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe
The Middle East and in Early Prints and Photographs
Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900
A New Nation: The Thomas Addis Emmet Collection of Illustrations Relating to the American Revolution and Early United States History
Ornament and Pattern: Pre-Victorian to Art Deco
Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration
Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, and Drawings bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States
Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922
Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs, 1860- 1945
Samuel Putnam Avery Print Collection and Related Works
Turn of the Century Posters
William Blake: Illustrated Books
Woman Suffrage and Feminism Photographs in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection
Wonders: Images of the Ancient World
World War I Photograph Albums and Postcards
Yiddish Theatre Placards: Buenos Aires and New York
and much more!

Image: Kitagawa, Utamaro, 1753?-1806. Nibijin ude-zumô (Arm-wrestling between two beauties). ca. 1793. From the New York Public Library, Digital Gallery.

Images from the History of Medicine

2009-08-28T06:54:00.006-06:00

The National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division has launched its image collection in a new software platform by Luna Imaging. Images from the History of Medicine comprises nearly 70,000 images dating from the 15th through the 21st centuries, with a particular strength in pre-World War II materials. Items include "portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine." The collection is of interest to a range of disciplines beyond medicine, including the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Materials include:

"portraits of health professionals and biomedical scientists; views of health institutions, such as hospitals and medical schools; fine prints with medically related themes; and images reproduced from the NLM rare book and manuscript collections. There are smaller numbers of illustrations of anatomy, medical techniques, and diseases, chiefly derived from rare book illustrations, such as Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Subjects include medieval astrology, World War I hospitals, international efforts to overcome drug abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases, among others. Of particular note is the fine prints collection, numbering more than 3,000 items, including several hundred caricatures on medically related subjects by Honoré Daumier, George Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson, and Louis Léopold Boilly. The poster collection of approximately 12,000 items includes representative examples of historical and contemporary posters dealing with public health issues, such as AIDS, smoking, illicit drugs, and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as several hundred posters documenting activities at the National Institutes of Health."

See the NLM announcement here for more information.

Image: Hull, Edward. Death saw two players playing at cards.. 1827. From Images from the History of Medicine.

Pathfinder: New Virtual Tour of the Art Institute of Chicago

2009-07-23T07:42:00.005-06:00

The Art Institute of Chicago has just launched an interactive floor plan called Pathfinder. This tool allows one to explore the entire floor plan, with links to works of art and their catalog information, panorama views of galleries, and exhibitions and events. Events include daily programming such as gallery talks and tours. Available in both English and Spanish, this is an innovative way to present the museum to those who may not be able to visit in person, as well as those who may be planning visits. The Art Institute plans to include gallery views of its entire collection as the museum's renovations proceed in the coming months.

Can You (or Your Students) Afford Not to Know About Free Photoshop Alternatives?

2009-07-21T18:31:00.010-06:00

Yet another profile and assessment of Photoshop alternatives has appeared: Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers, by Jolie O'Dell on ReadWriteWeb. O'Dell reviews 1) Photofiltre, 2) Paint.NET, 3) The GIMP, 4) Aviary, 5) Splashup, 6) flauntR, and 7) FotoFlexer. And here yet another reviewer finds GIMP to be a superior choice. "All things being equal, there's not a lot we can say to criticize GIMP. As an open source app, it is subject to continuous rounds of improvement; there is no free app that will duplicate the Photoshop experience as well as GIMP will."

Even if you already own Photoshop, you may want to keep these resources in mind for your students, who will surely appreciate knowing about free and open source alternatives. A couple of recent and related entries on this blog are worth mentioning, too. One post is about a SitePoint article on 19 Impressive Online Image Editors (many of which are free), and the other post is about GimpShop, a free modification of the GIMP that's intended to replicate the feel of Photoshop.

Via Ellyssa Kroski at iLibrarian.

Image: from Jolie O'Dell, Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers

Finding Images on Flickr: Advice Document from JISC

2009-07-14T07:32:00.005-06:00

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) has just released an advice document, Finding Images on Flickr. With hints on using images you find on Flickr, sorting your search results, date searching, finding images using maps, finding photos taken by specific camera models, subscribing to photo feeds, and more, this document contains a lot of useful information. A section on further resources provides related links such as JISC's Photo Sharing Sites and Images in Blogs and Wikis, Flickr's How to get the most out of Flickr, and Creative Commons' Questions for people thinking about using a Creative Commons-licensed work.

Image: johnb/uk, old/cameras, 2009. From Flickr, some rights reserved under a Creative Commons license.

VRC Flickr Page: New Building and DMB Collective Images

2009-07-11T07:27:00.001-06:00

The VRC has posted images on Flickr of our latest tour of the new Visual Arts Complex building (June 30) and of the July 3rd DMB Collective show opening at Vertigo in Denver. Please visit the VRC's Flickr group page to see these snapshots.

To view the latest VAC images as a set, enter "June tour" in the "search this group's pool" field at the upper right. When you get the search results you can scroll through them in "slideshow" mode by clicking on the Slideshow link on the right side of the page. To view the DMB opening images as a set, enter "DMB" in "search this group's pool."

If you are a faculty or staff member, student, or alumnus/a of the Department of Art and Art History, please consider joining the "Visual Resources, Art and Art History, CU-Boulder" group. You need to register for a free Flickr account in order to join the group and contribute content.

ARTstor Celebrates One Million Images

2009-07-10T06:52:00.006-06:00

ARTstor celebrates its fifth anniversary and one millionth image this month. ARTstor has come a long way since its launch of 300,000 images in July of 2004. ARTstor's latest newsletter outlines some of the important developments that have occurred in ARTstor, as well as the exciting plans in store.

Subscribers can now download images at screen size for use in PowerPoint. ARTstor now offers over 350,000 images of modern and contemporary art. Scholars can take advantage of the Images for Academic Publishing services at no charge. One of the most promising developments in the works is Shared Shelf, an enterprise cataloging and image management system that works in conjunction with ARTstor, which institutions will use to provide more seamless access to visual resources.

In just a few years ARTstor has become an integral resource for many disciplines at the University of Colorado. Congratulations to ARTstor on an incredible five years, and many thanks to ARTstor for listening and responding so effectively to the user community.

Howard Rheingold: Crap Detection 101

2009-07-06T18:15:00.003-06:00

Here's a little more on information literacy. Howard Rheingold's recent article, Crap Detection 101, is full of great tips for wading through online "toxic badinfo" and identifying credible information online.

These tips include easywhois.com for finding out who owns a Web site, factchecked.org for verifying online facts, Newstrust for news literacy tools, and many others.

As one commenter noted, Rheingold's article failed to mention that librarians are excellent at detecting and filtering out bad information. Remember that the Research and Instruction librarians at the University Libraries are experts at helping faculty and students with research questions. In addition to walk-in inquiries at the research desk, their "Ask Us" service offers consultations by e-mail, phone, or chat.

Image: Justin Hall, Howard Rheingold, from Howard Rheingold's Web site.

ArtBabble: Online Videos About Art

2009-07-04T08:32:00.003-06:00

If you are looking for online video content about art, be sure to check out ArtBabble. Launched earlier this spring by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, ArtBabble is "intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives."

Now partnering with IMA is Art21, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the New York Public Library. IMA intends to continue adding content from these and other institutions, hoping that it will become an online destination for videos about art.

Videos on the Web site may be found by keyword searching or by browsing different categories. The "Series" tab includes Shaping the New Century: An International Design Symposium, Behind the Scenes at MoMA, Art21--Exclusive, NYPL: Design by the Book, Roman Art from the Louvre Webisodes, and more. The "Channels" tab contains alphabetically arranged keywords for finding content on the site, each of which is accompanied by the number of relevant videos in parentheses. Examples include Ancient Art (17), Ceramics (4), Contemporary Art (93), Exhibitions (51), Film (5), Painting (10), Talks (23), and Video Art (4). The "Artists" tab contains a list of over 150 artists currently represented by videos on the site. This includes contemporary artists, such as Lita Albuquerque, Dawoud Bey, Chuck Close, Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Alex Katz, William Kentridge, Kerry James Marshall, Pipilotti Rist, Jessica Stockholder, and Richard Tuttle. It also includes some historical figures, such as Georges Braque, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, and Piet Mondrian. The "Partners" tab enables browsing by the project partners listed above.

Twitter Search in Plain English from Common Craft

2009-07-01T22:42:00.006-06:00

Common Craft has recently released a new video: Twitter Search in Plain English. As with their other videos, Common Craft uses charming paper prototyping and plain talk to provide an overview of the topic in a short and concise way. It's a follow-up to their Twitter in Plain English introduction.

I have mentioned Common Craft before -- they have created a range of these videos on technology topics such as social bookmarking, RSS feeds, wikis, and podcasting. See their Web site for more examples.

Tech Overload

2009-06-17T10:27:00.008-06:00

While the technology of social networking sites has allowed us to teach and interact in ways that were unthought of a decade ago, there is growing concern that we are spending too much time 'wired' to other humans as opposed to interacting face to face. The health awareness journal Energy Times recently put out an insightful article, Our Rewired Brains, illustrating the pros and cons of using technology as our primary means of connecting to other people.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2009-05-28T07:23:00.004-06:00

Almost all of us have heard the term "Web 2.0," perhaps ad nauseum. If you are not sure what this term means, don't worry -- you are not alone. Here is a must-see short video created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. While Wesch released the final version in March of 2007 (eons ago in technology time), it is still remarkably fresh. In less than five minutes, Wesch has captured the essence of Web 2.0 and its social and cultural implications. It's well worth your time!

Data Visualization and Mashups: Tag Galaxy

2009-05-27T07:46:00.003-06:00

Data visualization and mashups are both hot technology topics, and we might encounter and use them frequently without even recognizing them. Data visualization is simply the representation of data in visual form. Mashups may be defined very generally to mean the combination of elements to create new entities and services. Among other things, mashups might occur in Web applications, music, or videos. A good example of a Web application that embodies both data visualization and mashup technology is Tag Galaxy. It is one of many Web applications that take advantage of Flickr's open API (Application Program Interface), which allows third parties to access and manipulate images and data within Flickr to create new applications with novel functionality (i.e., mashups). Tag Galaxy invites you to search for a Flickr tag (a keyword that a Flickr user has assigned), and renders the search results of matching Flickr tags and related tags visually like a solar system (i.e., data visualization). This allows a user to observe the relationships among Flickr tags (and their associated images) in a novel and visually compelling way. This might prompt new image searches with previously unanticipated keyword combinations, which may in turn yield unexpected yet valuable search results.

The thumbnails shown here are from a search I conducted in Tag Galaxy with an initial tag query of ruins. The constellation of tag results include the terms temple, Rome, Italy, Mexico, castle, ancient, abandoned, and architecture (first image above). I selected temple, and in the next set of results chose angkorwat. On the following results (second image) I double clicked on the sun-like object representing the combination of tags I had followed, ruins+temple+angkorwat, and arrived at a "planet" comprised of images with these matching tags, which I can rotate with my mouse to observe in its entirety (third image). To see more search results I can scroll through more batches rendered in this "planet" form. I can click on any of the individual images to see a larger version and its title, with a link that take me to its home within Flickr.

Tag Galaxy and Cooliris (which I recently discussed here) are just two applications that use Flickr's API to search and display Flickr data in new ways. Some other useful tools are highlighted in the recent article by Ben Parr over at Mashable, titled 7 Totally Unique Flickr Search Tools.

35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

2009-05-19T07:40:00.002-06:00

Over at Six Revisions, Jacob Gube has posted an article with links to 35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop. While it's geared to beginners, including the most basic "Getting Started" materials, it also highlights some tools that should be of interest to users with a bit more experience, such as manipulating images with scripting.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

2009-05-18T07:27:00.010-06:00

Not sure what copyrighted materials you can safely use in videos you create and post on YouTube? Take a look at the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
from the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and the Center for Social Media at American University.

Released last year, this document provides best practices in the context of common situations such as commentary or critique; illustration or example; incidental capture of copyrighted materials; reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to preserve, memorialize, or rescue an experience or event; reposting in order to launch a discussion; and recombining elements to make a new work. It also provides a list of common fair use myths.

To further help online video creators keep within the boundaries of fair use, there is now a short video introducing these principles, Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend. It uses the language of online video to introduce the concept of fair use within the online video medium, and may be an easier-to-swallow introduction for many people, especially students.

Image: from Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend.

Via Boing Boing.