Fall 2011 Commencement Images

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

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

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 search by Company, Product, Date, Publication, Subject, Medium, Headline, and Audience.

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

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.