Susan Davi and I will be offering an introductory workshop on ARTstor on Wednesday, November 9, from 2:00 to 3:30 pm in 116A Morris Library. We will offer tips and training on how to find and download images, create image groups, and use the Offline Image Viewer (OIV) for classroom presentations.
All are welcome to attend, but seating is limited. Please click here to register for the workshop.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has recently redesigned its website. You can read an announcement here from the Met’s director, Thomas Campbell.
One feature which sets the new site apart from its predecessor is the ability to download large images of works from the Met’s permanent collection. The actual image sizes vary, but most are large enough to use in a Powerpoint presentation, and many of them are in fact quite large, so you can zoom in and make details if you need to. Many of the Met’s images are already available through ARTstor, but the new site provides another way to access this content.
The Met’s Terms and Conditions are also more generous than most. They do not permit unrestricted use of the images on their new site, as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Yale Center for British Art both explicitly do. However, the Met does permit you to use their images on a personal website, provided that the website is not-for-profit and non-commercial, that you do not alter the images in any way, and that you provide all accompanying caption information.
Users of ARTstor’s Offline Image Viewer (OIV) should be aware that it does not yet work with the newest Apple operating system, Mac OSX Lion (version 10.7). ARTstor is aware of this incompatibility and is working to fix it.
This problem occurs with every application when a new operating system is first released. The same thing happened with OIV when Apple released OSX Snow Leopard (version 10.6), and ARTstor worked quickly to solve that problem. For the time being, you may want to delay that purchase of a new Mac, make arrangements to use an older Mac instead, or even switch temporarily to using Powerpoint for your presentations.
Please feel free to get in touch with me if you need any assistance!
ARTstor has just released the first 4000 of a projected 12,000 images from the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN), the premier photo agency for works of art in French museums. Along with the collections of major Parisian institutions like the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay, the RMN’s holdings also include works in many of France’s palaces and regional museums. The addition of RMN images instantly boosts the strength of ARTstor’s collections of both French art in general and non-French art housed in French museums. This is easily one of the most significant ARTstor releases in recent years.
You can read more about the RMN collection in ARTstor here.
A sample ARTstor registration form
ARTstor has made an important change to how it allows users to download images. From now on, you must be logged in to your ARTstor account in order to download images. This means that if you have not already registered for an ARTstor account, you probably should do so now.
I have always encouraged users to register for ARTstor, because many useful features are only available to you when you’re logged in. Registration is free, quick, and easy (see the sample registration form at left), and I’m confident that ARTstor will handle your email address responsibly.
You can register in the Log In area at the upper right corner of ARTstor’s Welcome screen. In order to register, you must be at a computer on the UD campus, but after that you can access your ARTstor account remotely for up to 120 days (see below). You may use any email account you want (it doesn’t have to be your UD email account), and it’s generally wise not to choose the same password you use for your email. You may also want to uncheck the two boxes (shown in the sample form at left) to avoid receiving any mailings from ARTstor.
To continue accessing your ARTstor account remotely, you will need to reauthorize it every 120 days (roughly once a semester). To do this, simply log in to your account from a UD computer, and you will automatically get another 120 days.
For more complete information on registering for an ARTstor account, you can find detailed instructions here, or watch a short You Tube video here.
If your preferred browser is Firefox and you have upgraded to version 5 (released earlier this week), you may find that you have problems accessing ARTstor.
ARTstor is not currently compatible with Firefox 5, but technicians are working to fix this problem. In the meantime, the folks at ARTstor advise you to uninstall version 5 and use Firefox 4 instead, or simply switch to another browser, such as Internet Explorer or Safari.
If you need help with any of this, please get in touch with me!
Four new image collections drawn from university museums are now available in ARTstor. Click on the links below for ARTstor’s description of each collection:
Two new image collections focused on art and architecture in the Middle East are now available in ARTstor. Click on the links below for ARTstor’s description of each collection:
Susan Davi and I will be offering an introductory workshop on ARTstor this Thursday, March 17, from 2:00 to 3:30 in 116A Morris Library. Read the UDaily announcement here.
All are welcome to attend, but seating is limited. Please click here to register for the workshop.