The VRC is now a participant in the Grounds to Grow On program, collecting used Keurig cups for composting and recycling.
After making coffee in the VRC, place used K-Cups in the black recycling box (located on the lowest shelf next to the coffee station). Let us know if you have questions. Happy caffeinating!
The LUNA system maintenance and upgrade is now complete. If you have any questions, please contact the VRC.
Thank you,
VRC Staff
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) recently released Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. These standards define visual literacy as “a set of abilities that allows an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.” As you might expect, this aligns closely with the VRC’s mission to help instructors and their students find, create, and display images.
The seven standards listed below, as well as performance indicators and learning outcomes, are detailed in the report:
Contact the VRC to discuss how we can help your students meet these standards!
Via Derivative Image.
Reminder! The Visual Resources Center has partnered with the Center for Teaching and Learning to offer the following workshop:
Visual Literacy in the Classroom: How to Find, Create, and Display Images
Friday, November 18, 10:30AM – 12:00 PM
Gates-Blake 133
Images in the classroom go beyond Google and PowerPoint: students are expected to be visually literate (according to the Association of College and Research Libraries, “able to find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media”). This 90-minute session offers an introduction to the Visual Resources Center and a starting place for instructors seeking quality images for teaching in a visually literate classroom. The session will also cover techniques to engage students with image resources. Graduate instructors and Post-Docs are encouraged to attend.
Registration is Required. Please Register in advance for the session by clicking here.
Now through Halloween National UNICEF Day,
donations for coffee from VRC’s convenient, green, fair-trade coffee stand
will go to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF.
View Historical Halloween photos on UNICEF’s flickr page:
Having a hard time focusing while you work, what with all of those tempting distractions like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook? Or is your problem instead that you forget to take mental and physical breaks from your work? Either way, there are various web applications available to help you be your most productive. Check out Gigaom’s “19 Apps to Boost Concentration” for more information.
The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center will close at 2pm on Friday, May 27th and remain closed through Monday, May 30th in observance of Memorial Day. Have a great long weekend!
Photograph via the National Archives and Records Administration Flickr Photoset Documerica.
Where: CSL — 2nd Floor Cobb — Room C 210
When: Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Time: 1:30 to 2:30
Steven Clancy, Senior Lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Academic Director of the Center for the Study of Languages, will explore how the iPad can be used in the classroom. If you teach using a laptop computer and you are interested in using an iPad instead, you are encouraged to attend.
Unable to attend? Steven Clancy’s PowerPoint is available for download: Teaching with the iPad.
Via ġeðēode.
Are you looking for images to include in a class presentation or paper? The VRC is here to help!
ARTstor is a subscription library of nearly one million digital images from all disciplines. To access this database, click here. Next, click the orange Go button in the upper right corner.
You will need to login to access all of ARTstor’s features. If you have never registered with ARTstor before, click Register. You will need to provide an email address and a password. If you choose to use your UChicago email address, please do NOT provide your Cnet password (for security reasons). Select a password that you will remember.
ARTstor’s keyword search is available from the homepage. The default is to search all ARTstor collections at once.
You may want to conduct an advanced search. Under the keyword search box, click Advanced Search. You may search here by title and/or creator. Adjust Boolean operators at the left to narrow (“and”) or broaden (“or”) your search. You may also specify the geography, classification, and collection of sought images. You may specify date, but please keep in mind that art historical dates are not always included or accurate.
If you have found a relevant group of images but would like to further narrow your search, enter additional terms in the search box from the results page. Then be sure to select “Within this search result.”
You can also browse for images in ARTstor. One way to do this is by collection. From the homepage, under Browse click on Collection. Scrolling through the collections, you will get an idea of the kinds of images available in ARTstor. Click on the green folder with a plus sign next to each collection to further browse by classification. Keep clicking through to open a group of images in ARTstor.
You can also browse by Geography, Classification, or Featured Image Groups.
To search within a specific collection in ARTstor, you must browse to that collection, open the images, and then enter additional terms in the search box from the results page. For example, you might navigate to the Islamic Art and Architecture Collection by browsing, and then enter “technique” in the search box and specify “Within this category” to see images from the collection which illustrate technique.
Now that you’ve found some relevant images, you may want to return to them later. Use the Share > Generate image URL function to email yourself a link to individual images, or create an image group to access at a later time.
If you have any questions or would like to explore ARTstor further, helpful YouTube tutorials are provided. ARTstor’s Digital Library Help is always a good place to start when having technical difficulties.
To learn more about searching for images in ARTstor, please feel free to contact the VRC to schedule an appointment.