What is ARTstor?
Community projects
Society of Architectural Historians Architectural Visual Resources Network (SAH AVRN)
Partner: The Society of Architectural Historians
Announcement date: April 23, 2008
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has received a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop the SAH Architecture Visual Resource Network (SAH AVRN) a dynamic online library of architectural and landscape images for research and teaching. To develop content for SAH AVRN, SAH is collaborating with scholars and librarians from partner institutions, initially MIT, Brown University and the University of Virginia to contribute images and metadata to SAH AVRN, a shared resource that will be widely available. Initially images will be contributed to SAH AVRN by scholars at the same three institutions who have agreed to share thousands of their own images that were taken for research and pedagogical purposes. To develop the technology for this online resource, SAH is working closely with ARTstor, building upon the existing ARTstor platform for storage, retrieval, viewing and presentation of images, and to develop tools to be used in conjunction with SAH AVRN.
For full description of the SAH AVRN project, please see the SAH Website.
Judith and Holofernes Collection Project
Partner: Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust
Announcement date: March 6, 2008
We are pleased to announce that the Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust has given ARTstor a grant to build a themed collection on the story of Judith and Holofernes. This collection will be part of a larger project — The Judith Project — commissioned by the donor to enhance scholarship on The Book of Judith and its later lexical and iconographical traditions in Western culture from antiquity to the present.
As part of this project to promote new scholarship, approximately 30 international scholars were selected by the donor and an academic panel to present papers in a conference at the New York Public Library on April 17-18, 2008. The conference will be followed by scholarly research trips this summer, some of which will incorporate the capture of original photography for the ARTstor collection. In addition to the conference and this special ARTstor collection, The Judith Project will include a comprehensive bibliographic reference tool on the topos of Judith that is being created by the New York Public Library, as well as a wiki jointly created by the NYPL and ARTstor that will serve as a scholarly commons. By embracing technological innovation, The Judith Project intends to provide scholars with new tools for multidisciplinary, creative collaboration. Well after the project formally concludes, this special ARTstor collection will live on in the Library for ongoing study and scholarship. For more information about the project, please see: http://workshops.nypl.org/judith/.
National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program (NDIIP)
Partner: The Library of Congress
Announcement date: November 15, 2007
The Library of Congress, through the National Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), has awarded ARTstor a grant as part of its new Preserving Creative America initiative to address the long-term preservation of creative content in digital form.
Organizations (particularly small organizations) and individuals who photograph works or create digital images often do not have the resources or experience to create their
images of art, architecture, and cultural objects in such a way that the files are “archive ready.” Without associated technical and preservation metadata – these images of cultural and historical importance are at risk of being lost for future generations.
The award will allow ARTstor to conduct outreach with several individual photographers and organizations to determine what technical and preservation metadata should be captured and embedded in their files to help make their born digital images “archive-ready”. ARTstor will also create a tool to help photographers embed technical and preservation data in their files. Data will extend beyond the camera data already captured by many digital cameras, but also include information on the authenticity of the file—what state or version the file represents, the original filename, whether any adjustments were done to the file in Photoshop or other applications (for example, tonal or color enhancements were performed, or particular content was cropped out of the image). The tool would allow for exporting this data embedded in the file into a database, whether a simple Excel spreadsheet, FilemakerPro database, Extensis Portfolio, or a digital asset management system.
To help determine data requirements and to test the tool, ARTstor is partnering with: Northwestern University, a partner in developing the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive; The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, which is creating high resolution digital photographs of a substantial body of the Albers works; Rob Wilkinson from Art on File, an architectural photographer who documents contemporary architecture in the United States; and Artesia, a digital asset management system used by a range of non-profits and companies. The eventual minimal dataset will be mapped to the NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.87 - 2006).
The project will begin with requirements gathering for the recommended minimal technical and preservation data that should be embedded in a digital still image file. The second phase will involve creating and testing an editing tool. The project should be completed in September 2009.
For more information please see the Library of Congress NDIIP website: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov.