Contact: Melissa Cox Norris, Director of Library Communications, (513) 556-1558 or melissa.norris@uc.edu
August 5, 2005 - August 1st marks the first anniversary of ARTstor at UC! In just one year, this online collection of 300,000 images has become one of University Libraries most sought after databases. Available at www.artstor.org, the database covers architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, as well as many other forms of visual culture.
To date, 321 UC students, faculty, and staff have become registered users of ARTstor, making UC one of the top 5 users in the country according to an ARTstor April 2005 report. This number does not include those who simply access ARTstor to view images, but those who have registered for some of the database’s special features.
One of those 321 registered users, Shawnee Turner, a recent UC graduate in Art History and a teaching assistant for two years for the Survey of Art History course said of the database: “ARTstor has revolutionized the teaching of art history. Before ARTstor, a considerable amount of a faculty member's time was spent searching the library slide collection for images, thus taking away from time that could be used to develop lectures. ARTstor allows faculty members to not only compile images in a more efficient manner, but also to show art in new ways. For example, a slide is a static image, but with ARTstor viewers can more closely examine a work of art, even see the brushwork in a painting. This provides the opportunity to discuss the process of making art, rather than just the art object itself.”
In the past year, DAAP librarians have actively promoted the use of ARTstor at UC, including taking full advantage of the ability to create customized file sets of digital images for particular courses within ARTstor.
Founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ARTstor is a non-profit initiative with the mission of using digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching, and learning in the arts and associated fields. ARTstor draws from such collections as The Museum of Modern Art, Architecture and Design, The Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts, The Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, The Huntington Archive of Asian Art, The Carnegie Arts of the United States, The Illustrated Bartsch, and The Image Gallery. For more on ARTstor, read Source at www.libraries.uc.edu/source/volfour/artstor.html.
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