Bodleian Libraries paintings on BBC Your Paintings website

Posted on 13 December 2012 by iholowaty

Your Paintings is a website created by the BBC and the Public Catalogue Forum, which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country. There are around 212,000 records for paintings from over 3000 locations on the site. Most records have a digital image of the painting, along with details of where the original painting is located.

The site can be browsed by painting title, artist or the geographical location of the collection or gallery, and also searched by keyword. This free resource will be of interest to historians from a variety of fields, as well as history of art scholars. Keyword searches reveal paintings of World War One trenches, many medical-related images and key figures in history from across the globe.

Painting from the Bodleian Libraries and other places in Oxford

The Bodleian Libraries section of the site contains over 330 oil paintings. These are mainly portraits of people linked to the Bodleian Libraries, royalty and images of the decorated ceilings in the Bodleian Library.

There are also collections from other parts of the University (e.g. Pitt Rivers Museum), colleges and halls (including Oriel, Brasenose, St Stephen’s) and Oxford Brookes University. Many other places in Oxfordshire have also contributed images including municipal buildings, schools and museums.

WISER Courses in Week 7

Posted on 14 November 2012 by iholowaty

Next week Bodleian Libraries will be running workshops on data, images and reference management. Also don’t forget that this Friday we’ll be running WISER: Searching Online New Sources.

WISER: Searching online news sources (Fri 16 Nov 10.15 – 12.15) (wk 6)
News sources are primary resources for researching contemporary political and social issues. This session will provide an overview of the key resources and hands-on exercises with databases such as Nexis UK, Factiva, and Proquest.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers and academics. Presenter: Mark Janes > Book Now

ARTstor and Bridgeman: using images in teaching and learning (Tuesday 20 Nov 2.00-4.00) (wk 7) – The course examines two major digital image collections subscribed to by the University – ARTstor and Bridgeman Education – geared to research and teaching in the humanities, history of science and medicine, and social sciences. Viewing, presenting and managing images are also covered. Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University.
Presenters: Clare Hills Nova and Vicky Brown > Book Now

WISER: Tech Tools – Reference Management (Wed 21 Nov 2.00 – 5.00) (wk 7) – Keeping track of your references and formatting them correctly for your thesis or publication is a chore. Reference management software makes it easy and is worth investigating. This introductory session gives an overview of how it works and the pros and cons of RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley. Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers and academics.
Presenters: Ljilja Ristic, Oliver Bridle and Angela Carritt > Book Now

Research Skills Toolkit
An introduction to 10 key IT and information tools and skills for research students in a hands on workshop run jointly by IT Services and Bodleian Libraries. Sample topics include: reference management, keeping up to date, finding articles and papers, Excel pivot tables, finding and managing images, podcasting, Word for your thesis and measuring research impact. Who is this session for? Postgraduates. Historians’ session is Tues 27 Nov 10am-12 > Check dates for your subject and book your place

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities
Why not follow join our mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com.

Not a member of Oxford University?
If you are not a current member of Oxford University but would like to attend a workshop please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please quote your Bodleian readers card barcode number.

Questions? – Please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Related Links WISER webpage | HFL training webpage

19000 images from Walters Art Museum added to Wikimedia Commons

Posted on 17 May 2012 by iholowaty

19000 art images from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, USA have been added to the Wikimedia Commons website under creative commons licenses. There are digitial images of paintings, sketches, books and objects. You can limit your search on Wikimedia to this collection only by searching for by entering “Walters Art Museum” and any other search terms (for instance medicine) in the main Wikimedia search box.

Walters Art Museum images on Wikimedia (click to access)

The Walters Art Museum images can also be searched and browsed in the museums own website. The images are displayed in a more user friendly layout. The images can be browsed by category, such as ‘Baroque Europe’ or ’18th and 19th centures’, or by date or creator. The advanced search tool allows more specific searching.

A more user-friendly result from the Walters Art Museum website (click to access)

History Thesis Fair in 3rd week

Posted on 26 April 2012 by iholowaty

Thesis Fair: Thursday 3rd Week in Trinity Term – 10 May 2012, 2-4pm, Exam Schools

All 2^nd year history undergraduates are encouraged to drop in on the Thesis Fair which will give you the opportunity to discover the University’s vast information resources including library, archive and electronic materials.

Library experts and academic historians will be on hand to provide expert assistance and tips on the information available to you for your research and how to search through it.

Stalls cover a range of information including:

Medieval sources
Early modern & Modern sources
British & European sources
African & Commonwealth sources
Latin American sources
Indian sources
US sources
History of Science & Medicine
History of Art & Visual resources

And many more…

Meet 2 History Finalists at the Top 10 Tips stall to learn from their experience. They will also give a talk in Room 1, School, 14:45-15:00.

Further courses

Courses to help prepare you for writing your thesis will be run later in the term. These include:

Online resources for historians
Information sources for African Studies
Manuscripts
US studies sources for historians
Medieval sources for historians
Using RefWorks for your dissertation
Information Skills Minimum Kit – a session designed to help you use a variety of information sources and tools to search effectively and carry out your literature review

More information about these sessions and online booking is available from: www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history/thesisfair

Mapping Gothic France

Posted on 10 April 2012 by iholowaty

Mapping Gothic France homepage

Vassar’s Andrew Tallon and Columbia’s Stephen Murray have recently unveiled their digital project to document the architectural monuments of 12-13-century France, entitled “Mapping Gothic France”. This is an open-source, open access project available on the web at: www.mappinggothicfrance.org

The site consists of hundreds of dynamic, panoramic images, mapped to each monument, and accompanied by contextual materials including historical texts, time-lines, interactive maps, and biographies of scholars. It also contains tools for comparative study.

From the site:

“Whereas pictures can be satisfactorily represented in two dimensions on a computer screen, space — especially Gothic space — demands a different approach, one which embraces not only the architectonic volume but also time and narrative. Mapping Gothic France builds upon a theoretical framework derived from the work of Henri Lefèbvre (The Production of Space) that seeks to establish linkages between the architectural space of individual buildings, geo-political space, and the social space resulting from the interaction (collaboration and conflict) between multiple agents — builders and users. “

The site is currently in beta mode, but functioned well in Firefox when we used it. The project uses the dimensions of space, time and narrative to structure the project. Very detailed information pages about churches, such as the Cathedrale de Notre-Dame in Amiens, include various images, floor plans, further architectural description and information about each church’s political significance. Not all entries have the same level of detail, some have only images and floorplans. The comparison tool allows churches to be compared using dimensions and construction dates. The time dimension merges the churches on the project’s map with existing maps showing contemporary geopolitical divisions.

National Gallery of Art offering open access images

Posted on 20 March 2012 by iholowaty

The National Gallery of Art has launched NGA Images at http://images.nga.gov. NGA Images is a digital image repository of National Gallery of Art collections, which allows users to search, browse, share, and download images believed to be in the public domain. Many of the open access images have been digitized with the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

20,000 Open Access Digital Images

NGA Images homepage

NGA Images hold more that 20,000 images that can be downloaded and used for free. The site includes a reproduction guide (PDF) and a large help section. There is a Quick and and Advanced Search option and browsable collections prepared by Gallery staff (e.g. on 19th Century French Art)

Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington

Other features for users include the ability to create one or more “lightboxes,” or images sets, and to save, share, and download multiple images at a time. Users may add individual labels and notes to their lightboxes or to images within them. Links to users’ customized lightboxes may be shared via e-mail or may be copied and pasted to social media sites.

Open Access Policy

With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain (those not subject to copyright protection). Under the open access policy, users may download any of these images free of charge and without seeking authorization from the Gallery for any use, commercial or non-commercial. More information about the policy is available at http://images.nga.gov/openaccess.

Bodleian History Faculty Library at Oxford

A Bodleian Libraries blog

Tag Archives: history of art