New: Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque Images

I just finished uploading 1,621 Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque images from Saskia this morning! These have been hanging out in the office for a while now, but with Alex’s programming expertise and Diane’s metadata expertise, we’ve been able to load them all onto DUVAGA smoothly. You can access the newest images via my shared Instructor Gallery, “Saskia Images, 7/31/08 Upload.” If you have questions, requests, or comments, or if you spot metadata discrepancies, please let me know.

Changes to Art Databases

If you haven’t used ARTstor or Grove Art online yet this month, you’re in for a treat! Both sites have been pretty dramatically redesigned, and I think you’ll find both easier to use.

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ARTstor
If you’ve used ARTstor in the past, you might have been a little frustrated by the speed of the site, or the fact that it opened a new browser window by default. ARTstor has changed the software on which it is built, and seems to have improved quite a bit as a result. It’s now easier to perform searches, and much quicker to load search results. If you use their Offline Image Viewer (OIV), you get an extremely high resolution image. Most ARTstor images are also available for download, and subsequent inclusion in other presentation softwares (such as DUVAGA, where you can add ARTstor images as “personal” images), but if you go this route you will end up with an image too small to zoom in on (though it should be fine for standard, non-zooming projection). As a work-around, you are able to download details of images for use in other presentation software. As always, ARTstor is adding to their collections, which now number in the hundreds of thousands, and cover a lot of images that faculty outside the art field will likely find useful. You can access ARTstor through Penrose Library, and keep up with their latest announcements on their website.

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Grove Art Online is now housed under Oxford Art Online
A new site was launched earlier this month for Oxford Art Online, which encompasses Grove Art Online, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. While the new site is different from the old Grove Art Online, it seems like it will be easier to narrow your search to just one or a few of the sources covered, and to limit to types of results (i.e. biography or image). It remains an excellent reference tool for information on artists, movements, techniques, and themes, and now its information is better structured. Access Oxford Art Online through Penrose Library (note: this links you to the correct record and site, it just takes the library world a while to catch up with name changes like this).

If you have questions about or need help using either of these valuable resources, I’m happy to help!

Changes to DUVAGA Classroom Application

Joseph has been busy completely rebuilding the application we use to view DUVAGA images on the dual projection systems in rooms 118 and 119, and the results are quite nice. Retaining all of the functionality of the previous application, Joseph has redesigned the interface and made several enhancements. Here’s what you’ll see when you use the new classroom application:

It looks similar, but here are some of the new features:

• The metadata display no longer obstructs the projected image, instead appearing across the top of the screen.
• Only artist, title, and date information will be projected to students, but instructors will have access to the full object record.
• The zoom tool is easier to control.
• You can pan across an image you’ve zoomed in on by dragging the image around the display area.
• DUVAGA video and audio clips can be played through one projector, while an image is shown on the other.
• You can now open a simple web browser from the software without exiting the application and turning mirroring on.
• If you have added a web address to any gallery item, you can link to that site directly.
• Upon logging in, you have the option to view ALL of your galleries, or only those galleries connected to the current term.
• This application can be used on ANY computer that is connected to more than one display. So if you’re taking your laptop to a conference, you can use the application so that you can see all of the metadata, etc., but your colleagues only see the image. The software detects how many displays there are,and provides you with the right number of windows.
• The application will work on any operating system, including Microsoft, Mac, and Linux.

I’ll be providing one-on-one training sessions throughout August and early September, and I highly recommend you make an appointment for one to see the new tool and refresh yourself on the classroom technology.

New Image Viewer in DUVAGA

Next time you conduct a search in DUVAGA, you’ll have a new option for viewing your search results. Alex has incorporated an application called PicLens into the DUVAGA system. If you download the software (there’s also a link on the DUVAGA website), here’s what you’ll be able to do:

1.) Perform any search in DUVAGA, and click “PicLens Slideshow” from the results page (click the image above to make it bigger).

2.) If PicLens has been installed correctly, you should see something like the image above. There’s a scroll tool at the bottom of the page that will allow you to move through all of the search results very quickly.

3.) By clicking on one of the images, you can view a larger version of it, with its information. And if you click on the icon I’ve pointed to above…

You’ll return to DUVAGA, where you can add the image to your gallery.

This is a great way to sort through a lot of visual information, and to search through a lot of images quickly. Once you have the software installed on your browser, there are a number of other sites (including Flickr and Google Image searches) that it works with, too. Some words of warning, though: The application is very pretty and may be addictive. Also, it won’t work on all computer systems (like my 4-year-old Toshiba at home), but most newer computers should support it. And it does not project in 118 or 119, I think because of the mirroring software we use in those rooms. If you want a live demonstration or help downloading PicLens, let me know!

Happy browsing!

DUVAGA Search Enhancements

This week Alex rolled out several changes to the DUVAGA general search and art history search pages that should help you find the images you need. Here are a few changes you’ll see next time you log in:

(click for more detail, and see below for descriptions of changes)

1. More Accurate Searching with Multiple Terms - You may have noticed some weird results when you searched for more than one word at a time. For example, searching van Eyck in the artist field (see below) would bring up all the images by van Briggle, van de Velde, and Rembrandt van Rijn. While sometimes amusing (searching van Eyck and getting Van Morrison, etc.), this wasn’t really good. Alex has fixed this, so DUVAGA will look for images with both of the terms (“van” and “Eyck”) in the Artist field, rather than either of the terms (“van” or “Eyck”). This change affects all of the free-text fields (artist, title, subject, material, and “all fields”).
2. Ability to Search for a Term in All Fields - A feature we brought over from the general search page is the option to search “All Fields.” This will be useful if you want all images of or by a certain artist, or if you’re not sure which field something might have been cataloged in, or if you want all images with a certain word in the title, description, or subject field. Some of our images have lengthy descriptions, and this is a great way to find words in those descriptions. If you’re not finding something you think is in the system, try your search term here.
3. More Accurate Searching by Time Period - The “Time Period” field has been a little problematic in the past, because this field was connected to the artist’s life or activity dates, and not to the actual work. Thanks to a lot of work on the parts of the VMC grad students, we’re adding more accurate information to each image record, and you can now search by dates more reliably by selecting a date range from this drop-down menu. Find images by millenium for BCE dates, centuries for CE dates, plus decades for 19th, 20th, and 21st century dates.
4. Find Your Requests - There is now an “Instructor” field on the art history search page. This field will help you find images you’ve requested. You can do this from the general search page, too, but this will work better if you want to find, for example, only the images you’ve requested by a certain artist or from a certain country.
5. Sort Your Results - You can now sort your results by title, artist, or date added. Sorting by title and/or artist should help you identify duplicates and choose which image you want to use. Sorting by “most recent” will help you find your most recent requests, or anything new by a certain artist, etc.

All in all, we think this will help you find what you need on DUVAGA! Please feel free to make suggestions for future enhancements, and do let us know if you aren’t able to find something you think should be in the repository — if it’s there, we’ll help you find it, and if it’s not, we’ll add it!

Boston Public Library on Flickr

::: Sarah Wyman Whitman Bindings collection from Boston Public Library’s Flickr site :::

Following the example of the Library of Congress, Boston Public Library has begun their own Flickr project. It includes works from their special collections (including their print and rare books collections), and is well worth a look! Even better — it looks like all of the images can be used freely with proper attribution. To be sure, just check out the licensing information in each record (found under “Additional Information” in the image below).

::: Food rationing poster from Boston Public Library’s Flickr site :::

The scrapbooks of William Tupper Vaughn (which include photos of his travels to Egypt in the 1890s), war posters, and book arts collections are just a few of the jewels you’ll find on BPL’s Flickr site. The large images are large enough to be added as personal images to DUVAGA (just be sure you attribute properly — in most cases a comment in the “description” field stating where the image came from should suffice). Do you need help adding personal images? See page 5 of the DUVAGA user guide, available in the “About” section of the website, or stop by anytime for a demonstration.

::: The Great Pyramid of Cheops, from William Tupper Vaughn’s Scrapbook Collection at the Boston Public Library’s Flickr site :::