Images from the Spring 2010 BFA Show

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

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

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

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

Images from Spring 2010 MFA Opening on VRC Flickr Page

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

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

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

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

University of Colorado Digital Library

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.

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

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!

Steve Bailey's Google Search Tips in Less Than Five Minutes

Steve Bailey, our Arts and Humanities Distributed Academic Technology Coordinator (DATC), has recently posted Google Search Tips: 11 Google search Tips in Under 5 Minutes. This is a short and super sweet video tutorial that will likely teach you something you didn't already know about Google searches.

I've mentioned this before, but Steve is an amazing resource for information about academic technology, whose services are freely available to those teaching in the Arts and Humanities at CU Boulder. It's worth a reminder that Steve has quite a number of succinct and helpful tutorials on his Web site. These include Create a Blog at Blogger.Com; an introduction to Zotero, the Web-based bibliographic management tool; a short how-to on Creating PDFs with Your Mac; and many tutorials on CU Learn, the University of Colorado's software, service and support for enhancing online learning.

VRC Flickr Group

The Visual Resources Collection has created a Flickr group, "a new place for sharing images among faculty, students, and staff members of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder." We invite all Art and Art History faculty members, MA and MFA graduate students, studio and art history undergrads, staff members, and alumni to join the group and share images that relate to:

-- creative work and interests;
-- research and scholarship (e.g., photographs from travels);
-- departmental activities and facilities (e.g., show openings, the new Visual Arts Complex, etc.).

We encourage lots of tagging and descriptions; this helps with identification and context, and enhances access for all. To enable sharing of images for educational purposes, the use of Creative Commons licenses is encouraged where appropriate. We would like to see this become a valuable resource both within and beyond the department.

Tip: Cooliris, the free image browser plug-in I discussed a couple of weeks ago, is a really great tool for quickly and seamlessly scrolling through images in Flickr group pools. Try it; you'll like it!

Art and Art History Visual Resources Image Collection

The Art and Art History Visual Resources Collection invites all current CU faculty and students to explore our digital images with the Luna Insight Java software, available in the VRC. Come by room 82 of the Fleming Building and pick up a CD, load it onto your machine, request a username and password, and begin exploring our growing collection. It includes images of works from the department's MFA thesis exhibitions since 2000, the Visiting Artist program, contemporary art, and much more. You can search by title, date, artist, artists' CU affiliation, subject, style/period, media, location, and many more criteria. You may export high resolution images for use in teaching and learning at CU.

Art and Art History faculty and graduate students are encouraged to request images for inclusion in the collection. Please contact Elaine Paul for more information.

Steve Bailey's Online Tutorials for CU-Boulder Faculty

CU-Boulder faculty members who are not already aware of the great resources available to them on Steve Bailey's web site should take a moment to have a look.  Steve, the Distributed Academic Technology Coordinator for Arts and Humanities at CU, has posted some very helpful tutorials he created, as well as some useful links on his 'references' tab.  The tutorials currently cover topics related to CULearn, CUConnect, CULink, Web Design, and more.  Steve is an excellent source of information for the enterprise software systems at CU, as well as all kinds of academic technologies.