Utopia provides the blueprint for a resource that is reshaping teaching and research by enormously enhancing access to images in Cornell collections together with those in museums throughout the world.

-Claudia Lazzaro,
Cornell Professor of Art History

The availability of the collections provides a wonderful teaching opportunity. Students of European history, for instance, can study these objects throughout the year, examining the Egyptian Book of the Dead in September and Diderot's Encyclopédie in March.

-Maryterese Pasquale-Bowen, Ithaca High School Teacher

Incorporate Digital Collections Into the Classroom, Laboratory, Studio, And Home

Digital collections enable students to take field trips that defy both time and space and traverse disciplines and cultures-without ever leaving the classroom. They are important tools for both teaching and research because images can be accessed and used in multiple ways. Responses from students indicate that they not only like working with digital collections, but they feel it enriches their education. Digital technology is transforming the way we gain and use information; the educational environment is changing along with it-and as a result of it.

Utopia

Exploring new territories of the mind and the world distinguished the Renaissance. That spirit is revived through an interdisciplinary effort among several colleges at Cornell. Over 5,000 images of European Renaissance art objects, artifacts, architecture, and gardens exist online. A browsing environment enables users to review up to 100 images at a time and extensive descriptive information for each image is only a click away. Images can be accessed through author, title, and place as well as subject and keyword searches. Users are able to view and compare items in collections that have never been used in combination.

Invention and Enterprise:
Ezra Cornell, a Nineteenth-Century Life

This project affirms that rare manuscripts and artifacts are engaging and useful for young students. Over 30,000 scanned pages from letters, diaries, photographs, documents, and publications chronicle not only one man's family life in 19th century America, but describe important events in the century's history such as the Civil War, the development of the telegraph, and the founding of Cornell University. A timeline feature organizes the story that is told. Thanks to cooperation between Cornell's Interactive Media Group and the Cornell University Library, elementary students in upstate New York have eagerly explored local history through this website.

The Fantastic in Art & Fiction

The Fantastic in Art & Fiction is a digital curriculum unit developed by CIDC for John Anzalone, a Visiting Scholar at Cornell.  It consists of an image-bank that is a visual resource for the study of the fantastic or of the supernatural in fiction and in art. While the site emerges from a comparative literature course on the topic at Skidmore College, it is also intended to open the door to consideration of some of the constant structures and patterns of fantastic literature, and the problems they raise. In this sense, the materials presented here may find a use among students in a variety of disciplines.

Paper, Leather, Clay, and Stone: The Written Word Materialized

What is writing? Is it key to civilization? This website explores how the medium of communication shaped and was shaped by the message. The journey bridges forty-five centuries and five continents through images ranging from stone tablets to computer chips. It was compiled through a collaboration among Cornell's Rare and Manuscript Collections, a visiting scholar in Near Eastern Studies, and an Ithaca High School social studies teacher. In combination with the website, a teaching guide prepared by high school educators suggests projects that create an interactive learning experience for students. It stands as a model for other secondary schools.