Welcome Back!

We’ve made many improvements over the summer in the classrooms and our digital image collections. Our new digital image delivery system offers over thirty thousand images created at the VRC as well as the AMICA digital image collection of 108,000+ high quality images from American art museums.

If you have questions about using these images in classroom presentations, please contact the VRC. We can show you how to use digital image collections (Luna Insight, AMICA, ArtStor, Saskia), presentation software (Powerpoint, Keynote, ArtStor OIV), classroom and scanning equipment.

Aluka, Digital Library of African Culture

From the Aluka website:

Aluka, a not-for-profit, collaborative and international initiative, announces the release of its online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. ‘Aluka’ is derived from a Zulu word meaning ‘to weave,” reflecting Aluka’s mission to connect resources and scholars from around the world.

Aluka’s partners have contributed materials ranging from archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, to three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, photographs, and slides. The African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes database links high-quality visual, contextual, and spatial documentation. The Aluka digital library includes photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of African rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, traveller’s accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research.

This resource is available at the University of Chicago on a trial basis until December 31, 2007. Please direct comments to Rob Pleshar in the University Libraries or to the VRC.