Present: Elizabeth Byrne (chair, recorder), Michaelyn Burnette, Jan Carter, John Ceballos, Carlos Delgado, Manuel Erviti, Paul Hamburg, Dayna Holz, Sue Koskinen, David MacFarland, Carrie McDade, Jason Miller, Emilie Ngo-Nguidjol, Maryly Snow, David Sullivan, Bruce Williams.
1. Announcements
EAL has a new, colorful newsletter available in print and online.
We have one candidate for each open position for the next term of our chair and representatives to the other councils, except for Administrative Services, for which we need a library assistant. The "floor" is still open for additional nominees.
2. Function Council Reports
D. Sullivan reported that Collections Council would probably not meet again until after the arrival of Chuck Eckman, new AUL for Collections, in June. If there are pressing issues, please contact our representatives D. Sullivan and J. Roberts.
S. Koskinen reported that WAG has drafted revisions to the Services column of the front UCB Library homepage, and welcomes comments.
3. Image Databases Demonstration
Maryly Snow and Jason Miller of the Architecture Visual Resources Library discussed and demonstrated six major licensed image databases.
Snow urged us to make sure our faculty and students know about our licensed image resources. She mentioned 4 recent studies on the use of digital images in higher education, all of which noted that faculty make little use of these sources, mostly because they don't know about them.
a. VIUS. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/vius/ Visual Image User Study. Funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Penn State. Henry Pisciotta of Art Libraries Society.
b. RLG. Out of the Database, Into the Classroom: Final report from the RLG Instructional Technology Advisory Group, Gunter Weibel in charge. http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=406
c. Digital Resources Study, a Mellon sponsored research project at UCBerkeley, Diane Harley, principal. http://digitalresourcestudy.berkeley.edu/
d. NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education) The Visual Resources Environment at Liberal Arts Colleges http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/transformations/2006_4_3
She recommended that we link appropriate image databases to our subject pages on the ERF. Snow reminded us that topics not normally associated with visual resources can be visualized with images of places, people, and objects. Where authors lived, the areas they described, what their contemporaries wore, political posters and handbills/handouts from a particular era or event, regardless of the subject, often have visual counterparts that can be found in the image databases.
Snow and Miller demonstrated the 6 most important image databases, which have links on their website: http://www.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/resources/avrl/digital_images.htm
SPIRO, the Architecture Visual Resource Library's digital database of more than 100,000 images related to architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.
AP Multimedia Archive, the Associated Press' database of photographs, audio sound bites, graphics and text. Some photos date back to the 1820s and news stories back to 1997.
ARTstor, non-profit, Mellon Foundation funded project which has a half million images, not all on art or architecture, but planning on adding content in the natural sciences. There were questions about whether or not it is usable on our public pcs, since it requires the use of pop-ups and java. It also allows users to download a 400-pixel image, but to use larger, better quality images for classroom projection, users need to register, login, and save images in groups. The groups can then be loaded in the ARTstor Offline Image Viewer (OIV), a download from ARTstor that functions much like PowerPoint, with an emphasis on images. ARTstor also allows faculty to register for higher privileges so they can create web pages accessible by their students.
RLG Cultural Materials is a database of primary sources and images from all fields of knowledge from the collections of many cultural institutions worldwide. RLG CM is strong in history and social sciences because of its emphasis on primary resources.
Cartography Associates' Visual Collections, a freely-accessible image database also using Luna Insight, hosts over 35 separate high-resolution, zoomable image collections from universities and museums in photography, cartography, fine arts, architecture, and material culture.
UC Image Service, delivered via Luna Insight, provides digital image collections and robust tools in support of teaching, learning, and research for faculty and students of the University of California. It includes several collections: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, Farber Gravestone Collection, Hartill Architecture Collection, Hoover Institution Posters, Japanese Historical Maps, LUCI/Library of UC Images, MOAC/Museums and the Online Archive of California, Saskia Art & Architecture, SPIRO, Tebtunis Papyri, and UCSF Demonstration Project of medical and dental images. ARTstor and UC Image Service both provide access to digital images, ability to save images in groups, rearrange the display of images for classroom projection, and web-page creation for student review. ARTstor comes with content, while UC Image Service gathers content recommended by UC librarians to JSCSC and CDL.
4. Discussion on increasing minimum standard replacement costs was deferred until the next meeting, Thursday 4 May.
Go to Arts & Humanities Council minutes