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Digital Image Collections

How many library users are aware that the library is the gateway to many excellent collections of digital images? The Libraries currently make available free of charge to the York community several subscription image databases that provide:

  • Access to images that are not available elsewhere
  • Advanced and simultaneous searching across a wide range of collections
  • Sophisticated software tools that enhance use of the images
  • Descriptive metadata and cataloguing for each image
  • Images that have been rights-cleared for educational use

Digital image databases available through the libraries’ website are: ARTstor, CAMIO (OCLC’s Catalog of Art Museum Images Online) and Corbis Images for Education: Historical Collection.

What is ARTstor?

  • A digital library of images, their associated information, and software tools designed to enhance teaching, learning, and scholarship
  • Contains approximately 400,000 images from a wide range of cultures and time periods, including images of architecture, painting, prints, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts, design, archaeological and anthropological objects
  • Terms and conditions of use allow: searching and browsing across all of ARTstor collections, using images and text online, creation of portfolios of images, and making use of content in ARTstor for presentations and lectures, course reserves, classroom handouts, student presentations and papers, and research projects.

What can you do with ARTstor?

  • Browse content by collections, classification, or geography
  • Search content by keyword or advanced search
  • Sort search results by date, creator or title
  • View images and image data
  • Zoom in on and pan images for greater detail
  • Print and save images and related data to other hardware (e.g. CD, memory stick, hard drive)
  • Create groups of images for later retrieval and presentation
  • Organize image groups into shared folders
  • Direct other ARTstor users to images or image groups
  • Upload personal images and sound files to the ARTstor platform
  • Export images and image groups to ARTstor’s Offline Image Viewer (OIV) presentation tool
  • Save citations for images or image groups, and email or print these, as well as export them directly into RefWorks or a text file

There are currently three levels of access in ARTstor:

  • Unregistered user: search and browse for images, analyze, save, print data and images, view contents of public shared folders
  • Registered user: save image groups, add personal notes, register to view contents of password-protected shared folders, download the Offline image viewer
  • Instructor privileges: create shared folders, add instructor commentary, create personal collection

What is CAMIO?

  • Provides high-quality art images for works of art from around the world contributed and described by leading museums
  • Ranging from 3000 BC to the present, the content includes about 95,000 works of art – photographs, paintings, sculpture, jewellery and costumes, textiles and architecture – plus audio, video and media
  • Difficult to find contemporary art is one of its strengths
  • All content is rights-cleared for educational use

What can you do with CAMIO?

  • Browse content by contributing museum or work type
  • Search content by keyword or advanced search
  • Sort search results
  • View images and image data
  • Zoom in on and pan images for greater detail
  • View compound objects
  • Save and publish images for course lectures, posting to web sites, or emailing

What is the Corbis Images for Education: Historical Collection?

  • Provides access to over 400,000 of Corbis’ most popular historical, fine art, nature and science images
  • Makes available many of history’s most famous photographs
  • Images have been rights-cleared for learning-related applications

What can you do with Corbis Images for Education: Historical Collection?

  • Browse content in the following galleries: Iconic images, Art, Biography, Science, Heritage, Arts & Entertainment, History, World at War
  • Search content by keyword or advanced search which allows searching by photographer, date, location or descriptors
  • Download images for non-commercial and educational purposes

To access these digital image collections simply use Find eResources by title on the Libraries website. For specific details regarding use, see terms and conditions for each individual databank. For more on search tools and techniques for online digital images, see sidebar at right..

-- Mary Kandiuk, Librarian, Reference

Finding Digital Images on the Internet

It has often been argued that the Internet is a visual medium, but the real visual potential of the Web is only just starting to emerge.

Many of us are familiar with search digital image search engines like Google Images or Yahoo Images. These are powerful tools that find images mostly by searching text adjacent to images on the Web.

If it’s photography you are looking for you may also want to try Flickr.  Flickr is a free website photographers use to share and organize their photographs.  In November 2007 Flickr surpassed 2 billion photos and it is used by amateurs and professionals alike.  Contributors organize their pictures and form communities of users with shared visual interests using group pools and keywords as tags.

In some ways Flickr is better at searching visual content because Flickr users describe photographic content with tags.  The real frontier of image searching is now “Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR)” which attempts to search images using visual characteristics like colour or shape rather than descriptive phrases. These tools are still experimental but you can try them out at sites like Retrievr
or Colr.

In December 2007 the York University Libraries offered a workshop entitled “Picturing the Web”.  Check the Research Frontier Series listings for more workshops on cutting edge technologies.

-- Mark Robertson, Librarian, Reference

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