ARTStor [NYT link; free reg req'd]. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the service provides a massively larger pool of resources than previously available, changing the nature of how teachers assemble and use images in art courses:
Marguerite A. Keane, an adjunct lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, certainly feels lucky. Using ARTstor last spring during its test phase, Ms. Keane said she was able to assemble all the images for her semester-long course, "Introduction to Art History," in a few hours, the time it normally takes to gather slides for one class. If a student referred to a picture, she could usually locate it immediately and show it in class, zooming in on any details she wanted. "It was extraordinary," she said.
Cost remains an issue--initial licenses range from $1,000 for small community colleges to $60,000 for large research universities, in addition to approximately equal yearly fees--but the amount of images available dwarfs the slide-based holdings of nearly any other single institution (and even small collections of slide-based art are themselves extremely pricey).
The way technology has been able to transform education is remarkable, said Neil Rudenstine, the former Harvard University president who is now chairman of ARTstor. "That only happens, if you are lucky, once a century."
[via Lockergnome Bytes]
Posted by johndan at August 14, 2004 12:27 PM
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