Information for Faculty from Other Departments

BOSTON COLLEGE FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT VISUAL RESOURCES COLLECTION

Master of the View of Sainte Gudule: A Bishop Teaching

Digital Collections

The Visual Resources Collection is building what will become its primary archive of digital art images by licensing images from vendors and our own faculty members. We work in cooperation with the University Libraries to make these images available for campus-wide use. There are currently over 2500 images available through BCdia, including images from a set that covers major monuments and objects in the history of western art, a second set focusing more specifically on art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance, images of art and architecture in Rome photographed by members of the Fine Arts Faculty, and works from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. We are actively working to build this collection and expand its coverage.

The University Libraries subscribe to ARTstor, a collection of over 500,000 images that may be used for teaching. ARTstor also provides downloadable presentation software, its "Offline Image Viewer" or "OIV," which is like PowerPoint, but more dynamic, allowing you to zoom in on and pan images, and to have independent control of each of two images being displayed at the same time (as if you were operating two slide projectors independently). ARTstor's images are intended to be displayed via ARTstor's OIV, which will allow you to display the images at their full (large) size, permitting the zooming functionality. If you elect to download ARTstor images for use in another program such as PowerPoint, ARTstor will limit you to downloading smaller images. Most images are now downloadable at a 1024x768 size, which is large enough for classroom display in PowerPoint. If you prefer the features of ARTstor's OIV, you can use that application to create presentations that incorporate, or are comprised entirely of, images from other sources.

You will find additional collections of images developed by Fine Arts Department faculty on the Department's Links and Resources page. For art image teaching collections hosted at other institutions, see California State University's WorldImages Kiosk and Art Images for College Teaching. For more information regarding finding images on the Web, see Finding Art Images on the Web.

The Slide Library

Boston College faculty are invited to use the Fine Arts Slide collection with the understanding that the collection is a major teaching tool of the Fine Arts Department, and that the faculty of that department must have priority use of the slides. The collection is open by appointment only. You can reach the Curator (Andrea Frank) Monday through Friday at 552-8596.

The collection houses over 100,000 slides, which are generally arranged by artist. No subject index is available at this time, so it is advisable to come to the slide library equipped with the names of artists derived from research elsewhere.

Slides may be borrowed for use in classroom lectures at Boston College only. They may be taken from the library only for the duration of the lecture in which they will be used. However, you may reserve slides up to a week in advance of a lecture.

While the slide library can provide borrowers with carousel trays in which to arrange borrowed slides, we cannot provide carousel projectors for lectures outside the Department of Fine Arts. Arrangements for projectors must be made with Media Technology Services' Classroom Support Services (x24219) at least 48 hours in advance of your lecture.

Because most of the slides in the collection are copyrighted, duplication of slides by any means is not permitted. If you have your own materials from which you wish to have slides produced, please contact Media Technology Services' Photography department (x28677).

Teaching Assistants may borrow slides to illustrate presentations only in the classes in which they act as Teaching Assistants. Please note that the collection is not open to students, except for the purpose of illustrating presentations in Fine Arts Department seminars.

Image courtesy of Saskia, Ltd.
Master of the View of Sainte Gudule, "A Bishop Teaching," ca. 1470-90 (Musée du Louvre)