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Collections

The Visual Resources Center is part of the Academic Technologies Unit of CLA-OIT. We accept materials to be digitized from all departments and centers in the College of Liberal Arts. Art History is one of the largest participating units and has contributed approximately 50,000 images thus far. These materials are added to the Digital Content Library, (a password protected site because of copyright considerations) that is available for use by all faculty, students and staff here at the University of Minnesota. Please call us at (612) 626-2333 or e-mail dcl@umn.edu for more information.

Art History also has holdings of approximately 250,000-300,000 slides, ranging from prehistoric to the contemporary, in architecture, sculpture, painting and other media, from all areas of the world. The slides are filed using the Minnesota Art Classification Scheme. Click here for a rough overview of the organization. There are also approximately 100,000 photo archive plates available covering this same range of content.

A collection of over 200 films, in a variety of formats including DVD, laserdisc, VHS and 16 mm are available. The films are used primarily to support the Film Studies Program and do not circulate beyond Art History.

Policies

The Visual Resources Center (VRC) is intended first and foremost to support the teaching of courses offered by the College of Liberal Arts departmental faculty, including adjunct and visiting faculty. Because the slide collection is a resource supported by CLA, it is open to any other faculty members or graduate students who are teaching courses, but the priority will be for Art History courses. Qualified borrowers may use the VRC during regular hours and must checkout the slides. The checkout period is two days.

Given the Department of Art History's special relationship with the Weisman Art Museum, its staff will have access to the VRC for any museum related purpose. This includes museum lectures and docent training. In the case of lectures at the museum by persons other than regular staff, e.g. graduate students from other departments lecturing in the Art Sandwiched In series, arrangements can be made to accommodate them.

Here are the image ordering policies for faculty and students in CLA.

Here is the digitizing policy for faculty and students in CLA.

Click here to get our order form. This is an PDF from that you can fill out and then either print or send to us via email. You can use this to order images, audio or video materials. Please fill out one form per source (book, video, CD, etc.)

Funding

The Visual Resources Center would like to thank the CLA Infotech Fees Committee for providing funding for the creation of the Digital Content Lab. This lab is dedicated to the establishment of guidelines for scanning protocols and the maintenance of an appropriate database for metadata entry. More about our standards can be found here.

Please come visit the Lab to see us in action, or to find out more about our progress. It is located in Heller Hall, room 469. Email us at dcl.umn.edu  or call 612-626-2333 for more information.

Partners

In the summer of 2006, we partnered with the College of Design to combine our digital resources and provide a single, searchable Digital Content Library for use on campus. In 2007, we partnered with the Library at the University of Minnesota, Duluth campus so they can add materials as well.

Other Image Resources

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) began as a personal project dedicated to the principle of free exchange of image resources for and among members of the educational community. Allan Kohl of the Minneapolis College of Art And Design has made these image available and the University of Minnesota is proud to host the site.

ARTstor is a new cross-disciplinary image database. It offers collections of approximately 500,000 art images and descriptive information covering art, architecture and archeology. ARTstor's accompanying software tools will support a wide range of pedagogical and research uses including: viewing and analyzing images through features such as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared uses, and creating and delivering presentations both online and offline.

IMAGES (Image Metadata AGgregator for Enhanced Searching) is a campus-wide project to promote consistent and reliable digital image discovery. Using an XML based descriptive scheme, multiple image resources can be combined into one central search gateway rather than having to find and then search each resource separately. Created by the University Libraries.

Site last modified on February 21, 2008

Send comments and suggestions about this website to arthist@umn.edu.