One of the many assets of high quality, digitized content in a web environment, is convenient access to detailed images of works of art from anywhere in the world. As a result, students, professors and others can conveniently examine fine resolution scans and other images of paintings, textiles, sculptures and other art objects, at their desktops.
The UNK Library is taking advantage of such innovations through its subscription to Art Museum Image Gallery (AMIG). AMIG is a product of the H.W.Wilson Company, producer of the WilsonWeb products; it can be searched in concert with other WilsonWeb files on the UNK Library webpage. Most notably users can cross search AMIG with the Art article indexes Art Abstracts and Art Retrospective and retrieve both commentary and illustration on art themes.
According to the vendor’s information: "AMIG is a rich digital resource of art images and related multimedia gathered from the collections of distinguished museums around the world..." Moreover it is "...right-cleared for educational use. Cultures and time periods represented range from contemporary art, Native American and Inuit art, to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian works, along with Japanese and Chinese works."
This collection of more than 200,000 individual images is drawn from the collections of more than 1,800 world-renowned sources including the Musée du Louvre (Paris), the Museo del Prado (Madrid), the British Museum (London), the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), the Bardo Museum (Tunis), and the National Anthropological Museum of Mexico.
All images are offered in three sizes, including a high resolution based on the traditional 1024 x 760 pixel sizing. Each image is also accompanied by full citation information, so that the researcher can confidently retrieve, use, and describe the images. These images can be inserted into BlackBoard sites. They can be searched by keyword, subject, artist, ownership, title of work, type of object, creation year, and culture or nationality.
To use the Art Museum Image Gallery visit the Calvin T. Ryan Library webpage and follow this path:
www.rosi.unk.edu -- Online Reference Resources --Humanities -- Art Museum Image Gallery.
To search AMIG simultaneously with art journal databases:
www.rosi.unk.edu --Find Articles -- Alphabetical List of Indexes -- Art Abstracts.
Once within WilsonWeb click Open Database Selection Area, and select Art Museum Image Gallery and any other Wilson indexes you wish.
Previous In Brief Online articles are available at: http://www.unk.edu/acad/library/inbrief/index.php?id=3065
Trudy de Goede, Collection Development Librarian, 308-865-8587, degoedetc@unk.edu