Does anyone in the reader/viewership of this blog have experience using ARTstor? Our library subscribes to it. It looks awesome, though I haven't yet noodled around enough to determine precisely how it's awesome. There's a clip on YouTube that explains some of the basic features. In addition to searching images you can sort by title, creator, or date, create collections for students to view online, and download gorgeous high-res images for use offline (conference presentations, anyone?). You can also move all around in the image space itself, and zoom in quite close to observe details in images. Obviously art historians of all kinds must find this incredibly useful, but I'm interested especially in the access to photography and American Studies collections this database affords.
The above image is a screen grab from a keyword search on "Abraham Lincoln." And here's Lincoln's hand; I zoomed in on the earliest authenticated photograph of him, believed to date from 1846-47.
I'm lovin' it so far.
thanks for this ... i checked it out at the archives today and ended up finding a photograph that my 'find all the photos of Quito in the history of photography' research friend hadn't seen ... she also pointed out that several of the photos of Quito were mis-labeled (e.g. "Bolivian Avenue" not being a great translation of Calle Bolivar, as in Simon Bolivar, the founder of Grand Colombia...)
Posted by: c... | 03 July 2008 at 07:30 PM
Cool! And even better for catching errors! You should email them.
Posted by: caraf | 04 July 2008 at 10:39 AM