Traditional barriers to the use of rare books, original
materials, and works of art are their fragility and their location. Digital collections
can be used anywhere while the originals are preserved and protected for future
generations.
-Elaine Engst,
Cornell University Archivist
While no amount of technology,
of course, will ever substitute for seeing the original, our hope is that the online
collection will excite those who would not normally visit a museum, and enrich the
experience of everyone interested in art.
-Franklin W. Robinson, Director, Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art
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Create
And Maintain Digital Resources
Using the resources of the Internet and computing and
networking
technologies, CIDC is developing shared digital collections of visual and textual
resources drawn from a variety of sources at Cornell and around the world. The website,
http://cidc.library.cornell.edu, provides access to these rich resources. Organizing and
maintaining each online collection requires cooperative efforts between academic,
technical, and managerial specialists. All illustrate the potential for synergistic
collaboration inherent in research universities like Cornell and exemplify the tremendous
applicability of digital collections.
A visually welcoming database of 2,600 images of artwork and
personal papers of notable ornithological painter, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, was assembled
from three campus collections in the Cornell University Library, the Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art, and the Laboratory of Ornithology. Fuertes' journal entries and
illustrations made from the 1899 Harriman expedition to Alaska enable users to see and
hear as virtual explorers. The project was part of a joint effort with Eastman Kodak
Company, the University of Southern California, and the Commission on Preservation and
Access and was recognized by PC/Computing as one of 1995's "best free sites on the
Internet." The integration of visuals with textual information creates a captivating
story for users at all levels.
CIDC,
in conjunction with the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, began in January
1998 an ambitious two-year project to prepare digital surrogates for
up to 85% of the items in the Museum.
A digital photo studio was selected and installed, and two digital
photographers, a part-time
systems support specialist, and two catalogers were hired to capture the
images, prepare derivatives suitable for delivery on the Web, and provide
access points that will make searching for images possible. This past year
a second camera was donated to the Museum and installed.
By putting the collection online, students, faculty, visitors, and
users on the Internet will have access to the riches of one of the
country’s major university museums, only a fraction of which can be
exhibited at any one time. Once
converted and accessible, the digital collection can be integrated into
Cornell’s curriculum, and planning is underway on how the museum images
could be used in local public schools.
CIDC’s
direct involvement with the project ended on 1 January 2000, though the
Museum has been able to keep aspects of the project in place with their
own funding. Over 14,000
items from the Museum’s holdings have been converted to digital form and
made available on campus at http://insight.library.cornell.edu.
Through constant refinement of the workflow and equipment, a daily
throughput rate was achieved that to our knowledge no other museum has
been able to match. The
project remains a model for other institutions to follow.
CIDC has developed and
maintains a database for a shared image collection compiled from slides
from the slide libraries of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
and the Department of History of Art; the digital surrogates from the
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; and photographs from the Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Cornell University Library.
Searches conducted across all four collections will make it a
valuable interdisciplinary teaching and research tool.
During this past year,
CIDC has continued to provide the infrastructure that makes shared imaging
cataloging across the campus possible.
Staff continues
to work closely with the various units to develop common descriptive
practices intended to facilitate cross-unit retrieval.
The Luna Insight client was introduced to faculty and staff in
1999, and plans are underway to incorporate its use into several courses
this Fall.
CIDC hosted the meeting of the software’s user group in June, at
which representatives from Yale University, the University of Texas and
the University of California – Berkeley, Smith College, Vassar College,
and several art museums were present.
Projecting America: A New Initiative
 The
success of CIDC’s imaging activities to date has led to the development
of several new initiatives. Foremost
among these is “Projecting America.”
Projecting America is a major digital initiative supported by the
Office of the Provost, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the College
of Architecture, Art, and Planning. The aim of this broad-based
collaboration is to provide the Cornell community with access to 10,000
digital images representing American visual and material culture of all
periods. The primary audience for the project is
comprised of faculty members in Colleges across the University who
regularly incorporate images into the classroom experience. The estimated
duration of the project is two years.
CIDC is providing advice on creating and cataloging the digital
resources, and will provide the shared technical infrastructure for the
project (utilizing resources acquired for the Museum project).
In conjunction with Salah
Hassan, a professor in African Studies, and the John Henrik Clarke
Africana Library, CIDC is providing infrastructure and systems support for
the Contemporary African Artists Database (CAAD) project.
The CAAD project is a Rockefeller-funded initiative to develop a
print and online bio-bibliographical guide to contemporary African
artists. CIDC staff built a
database that is used to organize information about the artists.
The database is accessible via the Web for searching.
In addition, authorized users can update and add to the database
via the Web. Finally, staff
have linked up to five representative images to the record for each
artist, thus providing a sample of the artist's work. Future
work will include exploring extending the database to incorporate data
from other sources both in this country and abroad.
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