Why is this a good thing?

Avery and Art Index can now be searched along with other EBSCO databases, including Garden, Landscape and Horticulture Index, Environment Complete, Academic Search Complete,  American History and Life, and other databases that contain interdisciplinary material that may be related to your topic.

• To do a big, broad interdisciplinary search, go ahead and choose to “Select All” EBSCOhost databases.
• You can still search each database individually by clicking on a link to each database from the library website, or by selecting a single database once you’ve started your search.

You’re also getting lots of bells and whistles with EBSCO.  It works smoothly with RefWorks and Zotero, allows for RSS feeds and alerts of new publications, and links more easily to some of our online content.

Got questions?  Need help with the new look?  Just ask.  We’re here to help.

The image above was clipped from an Al Jazeera English news broadcast on the 28th of January.  It shows two views of Cairo — both live feeds.  On the left, we see Al Jazeera’s footage of a police van burning in the streets after protesters toppled it.  On the right, the Egyptian State TV shows a live view of the (seemingly tranquil) Cairo skyline.  According to Al Jazeera, the two cameras shooting these scenes were just a few hundred feet from each other.

What can we learn from this?  As researchers, we are often caught up in the process of gathering information.  We search, we seek, we download.  We sometimes forget that even when we gather “facts”, those facts can be biased.  Both live views of Cairo captured in the screen above are true.  They were both factual at the time.  But each certainly presents a different take on the events of the night.  The same can be true of facts you discover through your research.  Bias can present itself within a text, but also in what is left out.  Authors, like politicians, strengthen their arguments by carefully arranging them — by choosing what to depict and what not to.  This is even more true on the free web, where the vast majority of sites belong to corporations, non-profits, government entities, and others with their own concerns and goals.

So, a reminder today to know your sources.  Question everything.  Dig deep.  Look at the information that’s given, and then look for what’s missing.  In the immortal words of the X-files, “The truth is out there.”

Good news!  You can now use ARTstor on the go on many mobile devices.  If you’re on one of the common mobile browsing platforms (IPhone 2.2.1-3.1., IPod 2.2.1+, IPad, Safari 4), you can log in and view the 1,000,000+ images that ARTstor offers from anywhere with a connection.  You can also access your image groups.  Zooming in isn’t as easy as on the traditional site… but you do get access to all the image metadata (you know, the juicy details… like the date, size, medium, etc.).

Take a look by going to http://mobile.artstor.org
Or, read more about it here.

We’ve got lots of databases that have gone mobile… Check them out, and bookmark them on your favorite device!

The Bedroom by Van Gogh displayed by Google Art Project

Google has a new gizmo, just announced today.

The Google Art Project has three key features:

1. The ability to explore selected galleries virtually, through a kind of “interior” street view.
2. High resolution images of artworks contained within those galleries/museums, which make tiny details visible through high-powered zooming.
3. The ability for users to form virtual collections of artworks that can be shared and annotated.
   (Read the official press release here)

How does this compare to library resources like ARTstor?

• At this point, the Google Art Project includes 18 museums and galleries from all over the world.  ARTstor, however, works with over 150 collections that range from photography to artwork to archival images.  So, we’re definitely talking about totally different sets of images.
• ARTstor contains over 1,000,000 images, while Google’s Art Project contains just over 1000.
• ARTstor has negotiated educational access for the images in its collection.  Some images in Google Art Project’s galleries are blurred out because they are restricted by copyright issues.
• ARTstor images are accompanied by authorative information about the work’s title, date, and more.  Google Art Project’s images seem to have this information as well, although the source is a bit unclear.  Google Art Project also integrates with other Google resources to try to provide additional context for the artwork and artist.
• ARTstor allows you to see images from the same collection, but does not offer the same kind of virtual interior experience that Google Art Project does.  That said, it doesn’t seem realistic that Google Art Project will be changing these interior views when exhibitions change.  So, you’re really getting a snapshot of a moment in time at each institution.
• The resolution of the images in Google Art Project far exceeds that for most ARTstor images.  Take a look at the brushwork for a Van Gogh, for example.  Breathtaking!  However, only one artwork from each of the 17 participating institutions was selected for this kind of special photography….

So, go and explore Google Art Project!  It’s a bit like traveling from your computer.  But we think you’ll likely be sticking with ARTstor for your academic needs.  We do look forward to seeing whether ARTstor looks at adding any features in the future in response to Google’s move into the art world!