Leo Baeck Institute’s Archive of Jewish Life Now Online

 

Yesterday the New York Times announced, “The Leo Baeck Institute, a New York research library and archive devoted to documenting the history of German-speaking Jewry, has completed the digitization of its entire archive, which will provide free online access to primary-source materials encompassing five centuries of Jewish life in Central Europe.”

The online collection for the Leo Baeck Institute is called DigiBaeck, and is:

a growing treasury of artifacts that document the rich heritage of German-speaking Jewry in the modern era. DigiBaeck provides instant access to materials ranging from rare 16th century renaissance books to memoirs that document the experience of German-Jewish émigrés across the world in the 20th century.

In addition to manuscript material and archival photographs, more than 2,600 art objects have been digitized and are accessible on the website. While there is a lot of material digitally available now, on October 16, the expanded archive will be released online, representing the archive online in its entirety.

Via the New York Times

 

Art.sy: a New Online Art Discovery Tool

The New York Times wrote yesterday of a new start-up called Art.sy, which is digitizing works of fine art to catalog in its database, called the “Art Genome Project”. Their service is similar to Pandora, which mapped a “music genome” in order to encourage user discovery of new songs, or Netflix, which uses algorithms to predict and suggest films and movies a user might like.

Art.sy already has 20,000 images in their database, is partnering with galleries, museums, and other cultural institutions to increase their catalog. In addition to traditional subject, genre, and period/movement based descriptions, Art.sy’s team is also tagging works with categories that their system will use “to make connections that are seemingly from different worlds.” These categories include ideas such as “focus on the social margins,” or “personal histories,” and “private spaces.” The system will also search for images that are most similar in terms of composition and color, providing yet another way to access different images.

For more information, see Art.sy’s blog or visit the Art.sy website, where you can request a login or browse the beta site.

Via New York Times

Cinema Image Gallery Database Trial

The University of Chicago now has trial access to Cinema Image Gallery, an EBSCO database featuring pictures, posters, video clips, film stills and other materials from the world of moving images, starting in the late 19th century and continuing to present day.

Cinema Image Gallery presents the history of moviemaking, as well as up-to-the-minute content from recent releases, and an extensive collection of television stills.

Content Includes:

  • More than 217,000 superior-quality images
  • A treasure trove of more than 6,200 posters and lobby cards used to promote movies
  • Links to 160 full movies, and to biographical materials about notable figures in the industry
  • Portrait photography and biographies of the stars of film and television
  • Database-specific search parameters developed specifically for this resource—Title, Director, Actor Names, Genre, Awards (Academy Award, Cannes Film Festival, Screen Actors Guild)—to ensure accuracy and speed in locating relevant material

Access the trial on-campus here. Let us know what you think in the comments!

New Image and Media Database Trials

University of Chicago users now have trial access to the Paley Center for Media iCollection until February 28th. Please contact us for login information. The iCollection includes 15,000+ programs from the Paley Center’s collection. They are adding hundreds of new radio and television programs and advertisements each week as the collection is digitized.

The Prometheus Image Archive is also available to University of Chicago users on a trial basis until March 7th. See “Campus Login” at left and accept the Terms of Use for access.

prometheus is a digital image archive for Art and Cultural Sciences. prometheus allows for the convenient search for images on a common user interface within different image archives, variable databases from institutes, research facilities and museums.

Please send feedback about these databases to the Visual Resources Center or to Nancy Spiegel, Bibliographer for Art and Cinema at Regenstein Library.

Mapping the Sculpture of Britain and Ireland

Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 is the first authoritative study of sculptors, related businesses and trades investigated in the context of creative collaborations, art infrastructures, professional networks and cultural geographies. This database is the main outcome of the research and contains over 50,000 records about sculptural practice. The information has been entered so that the numerous connections between different areas of practice can be explored. To read more about the research programme click here or to view some sample searches click here.

A mobile interface is also available.

NYARC: The New York Art Resources Consortium

In 2006, the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Frick Collection teamed up to create NYARC: the New York Art Resources Consortium, a system which unites the resources and libraries of these institutions and makes them more accessible to both scholars and the general public. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYARC seeks to extend library and archive resources, services, and programming to a wider audience, and to facilitate collaboration between leading art research institutions.

Through NYARC’s website you can access the 800,000-record ARCADE database, which serves as a cohesive online source for the combined holdings of the Frick, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum. There is also a portal for WATSONLINE, the online catalog for the Museum of Modern Art. Finally, links to news posts alert you to current projects like the JSTOR Auction Catalog Pilot Project and new holdings in the NYARC museums.

To view the New York Times’ profile of NYARC, refer to this article from March 14th, 2010.

This blog post was contributed by student staff member Emilia Mickevicius.

Database of Virtual Art

The Database of Virtual Art seeks to document and ultimately preserve the evolving field of digital installation art. The database is intended for both researchers and artists, and digital media artists are encouraged to post content themselves. The web-based resource is free and allows browsing by artist name as well as keyword. Works, literature, people, events and institutions may also be searched.

Pictured: The Living Web by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, 2002.

English Version of Louvre Collections Database

The first-ever English version of the Musée du Louvre Collections Database, Atlas, is now available online.

Atlas allows the direct online consultation of 35,000 works of art exhibited in the Louvre. Online visitors can access the basic information displayed on labels accompanying works in the museum, together with authoritative commentary and analysis by the curators and staff. Visitors can carry out simple or advanced searches by keyword, artist, title, inventory number, medium, technique, department or room. Recent acquisitions are also highlighted. Atlas allows visitors to create a personalized album. When printed, the selected works are grouped by location within the museum (wing and floor number).