ARTSTOR
Database Acquired:
Encouraged by the lobbying efforts of this committee and other MU faculty, our librarians have successfully negotiated with the MU Student Fee Capital Improvement Committee to fund the initial cost of this database. Librarians are currently working with ET at MO to develop funding for the substantial recurring costs.
Overview:
ARTstor is the world's best digital library of images, including paintings, photographs and graphic works from the full span of history. Although the database is constantly growing, it currently contains over 600,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and the social sciences. For more details, see
Product Site
Important Features:
Access
ARTstor was created to respond to the needs of universities, museums, galleries and private collectors seeking to digitize their existing their existing slide libraries and thus provides unprecedented high quality on-line access to these collections, including both canonical images and those "off the beaten track."
Searchability
ARTstor includes features such as the ability to browse by collection, classification or geography; the ability to search content by keyword or advanced search terms; and the ability to search results by date, creator or title.
Advantages for Undergraduates:
Undergraduate Testimonials
Lesson Plans
Course Development and Research
ARTstor contains an outstanding set of tools to create, view, and present image collections for a class, including high quality images that allow zooming for close ups, the capacity for split screen presentations, 360 degree viewing for architecture and the ability to save class presentations for future use. Faculty members can set up class websites with slide libraries and projects, and easy advanced searches facilitate undergraduate research.
Enriched understanding of visual culture
The "visual turn" in humanistic inquiry and the digital revolution in contemporary culture have contributed to a new demand for images across higher education. With the ease of using ARTstor, images can be easily integrated into the curriculum not only of Art History classes, but into other fields of inquiry in the humanities. In English classrooms specifically, one effective use of ARTstor is to discuss the rich visual record of illustrations of major works that have inspired artists across the centuries (such as Paradidse LOst): these illustrations spark student engagement with the works and their reception history.
Importance to Faculty and Graduate Students:
Faculty Testimonials
Interdisciplinary Benefits
ARTstor could be used not by faculty in various humanities disciplines, but also by those in such diverse programs as Education, Journalism, and Architectural Studies.
Productivity and retention
Most of MU's peer institutions subscribe to ARTstor for their students and faculty. As a consequence, many of our new faculty had access to ARTstor as doctoral students and have made ARTstor an integral part of their research and teaching methods. Obtaining ARTstor for MU would give faculty access to the same innovative research and teaching strategies which are enjoyed by their peers at other institutions. Competitive resources are essential to the recruitment and retention of the best new faculty and graduate students.
Advertised Price: The typical initiation fee for an institution with the number of students that MU has would be $40,000 (one-time subscription)/$20,000 (annually)
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