Visual Resources Assocation, Atlanta 2010

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

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

VRC Training Available in Digital Imaging

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

Remember that the VRC houses community imaging stations featuring:

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

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

Free Sites for Sharing Very Large Files

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

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

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

Clever Music Video Inspired by Art History

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

14 Tools to Teach about Creative Commons

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

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

Via the always informative Ellyssa Kroski at iLibrarian.

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

WorldImages: 75,000 Images from California State University

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

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

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

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

U.S. National Archives in The Commons at Flickr

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

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

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Online

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

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

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

ARTstor Travel Awards 2010

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!

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.