Catherine Worrall, Image Collections Co-ordinator at the University College Falmouth, has given her kind permission to publish the following review. She discusses how the University College Falmouth use three databases to provide images and presentation software to their staff and students, and why it is important for them to use all three in combination.
1. ARTstor
Although I don’t demo the ARTstor offline viewer, I have looked at it and think it’s useful, although it doesn’t have all of the functions that the online viewer does, including adding text/notes to the images, I think you have to do this in the online one, which then transfers across. But it is good though in that you can add your own images and combine them with ARTstor’s images.
Teaching students how to use these various image databases has been an interesting experience as they vary greatly in their functionality. ARTstor I feel wins hands down in most categories, it’s very intuitive, it’s functions are excellent, in particular the zoom feature is the best that I have seen. It now features a PowerPoint download option, which is really easy to use, and simply downloads an image group directly into PowerPoint in a few clicks. Although I try to encourage staff and students to use ARTstor’s slideviewer, as it is really good, users tend to get stuck in their ways and often resort to PowerPoint (which I think is a shame, as it was never really meant for images). The only downfall with ARTstor is the subject coverage, it has an American and art history bias, and is lacking in design history, however students seem very happy with it for research, and staff here are also impressed with it mostly because of its sophisticated functionality.
2. Bridgeman Education
Bridgeman has a more European and British bias, compared to ARTstor and provides access to images which are more obscure or from private collections. Bridgeman has recently upgraded its functionality, with big improvements to their slideviewer and zoom features. Demonstrating Bridgeman has been fine and both students and staff navigate the interface with no problems, and there has been positive feedback regarding its subject scope.
3. Madison Digital Image Database
MDID2, which is the version we’re using currently, although we will migrate to MDID3 when it is available in the autumn, has been great. It’s given me a place to store images and metadata, and is easy to upload both images and metadata. We will be launching it in the autumn, so I have limited experience of demonstrating it to others’, apart from a few staff members involved in our pilot. Compared to ARTstor, its functionality is not as sophisticated, but it serves a purpose, it’s somewhere users can store their own images and combine them with others both in MDID and elsewhere to create slideshows/groups of images. For us, it is a place to keep unique local collections such as Cornwall Artists and Designers and Degree Show work, and I’m sure it’ll be useful when it is launched. The slideviewer is pretty easy to use and staff liked the lightbox viewer in particular, as it reminds them of viewing slides.
Overall, for now, it is important for us to have all 3 image databases, as they work as a team, and each has its pros and cons!
Links:
- Association of Curators of Art and Design Images (ACADI) website/blog
- ARTstor: a nonprofit digital image library for education and scholarship.
- Bridgeman Education: a dedicated service that supports the use of high-quality images in education for teaching, research or reference.
- Madison Digital Image Database (MDID) demo: a system through which images can be selected and presented in a ‘virtual slideshow’. Faculty teaching needs were
the driving force behind the design. - News about the Madison Digital Image Database project including MDID3
- MDID3 information (PDF via Google docs)
- Review of ARTstor’s Public Offline Image Viewer (OIV)
