Artstor is a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

that builds and distributes the Digital Library, an online resource of more than 2.5 million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, and Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and image management

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

service that allows institutions to catalog, edit, store, and share local collections.

History

Since 2003, the organization has been an independent non-profit 501(C)(3) organization based in New York. Starting in 2016, it joined in a strategic alliance with Ithaka Harbors, which currently operates the services JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R. In the late 1990s, as universities and libraries began to convert their slide libraries into local digital image databases, Artstor was created to address the growing need for a shared online image library that would be accessible to educational institutions worldwide. The Artstor Digital Library is intended to reduce redundant efforts of scanning and cataloging thousands of the same images from multiple repositories, and also to enable new digital image collections to be shared for teaching and research. The initiative paired innovative digital image and online technologies with Mellon Foundation's ongoing mission to support higher education, museums, the arts, and art conservation to “bring about a substantial transformation in art-related teaching, learning, and research.” Artstor's primary goals as an organization are: to assemble image collections from across many time periods and cultures; to create an organized, central, and reliable digital resource that supports strictly non-commercial use of images for research, teaching and learning; and to work with the arts and educational communities to develop collective solutions for building, managing and sharing digital images for educational use. Like many non-profits, Artstor has a mixed business model; some services are provided on a fee basis (geared toward the size of the subscribing institution) and others are provided free of charge to the community.

Digital Library

The Artstor Digital Library includes a set of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching purposes. There are currently more than 1,500 Artstor institutional subscribers in over 45 countries, including

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...

s and

universities A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

libraries A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...

, primary and secondary

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...

s, and other non-profit organizations. The Artstor Digital Library offers a wide range of images needed for interdisciplinary teaching and research, including contributions from the leading museums, photo archives, libraries, scholars, photographers, artists, and artists’ estates. These diverse collections include:

Magnum Photos Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo. It was founded in 1947 in Paris by photographers Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, Maria Eisn ...

, Carnegie Arts of the United States, The Illustrated Bartsch, the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, The Huntington Archive of Asian Art, and The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMA) Architecture and Design Collection, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the Bodleian Library, and more. The Digital Library comprises more than one million images from hundreds of collections worldwide. The Digital Library is continually expanded by new contributions such as: Mark Rothko Estate; Latin American Art (Cisneros Collection);

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

(SFMOMA); Christopher Roy: African Art and Architecture;

Berlin State Museums The Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen ...

; the Gernsheim Corpus of Master Drawings (185,000 images of old master drawings);

Larry Qualls Larry Qualls (D. December 3, 2022) was an American visual arts archival documentarian, editor, and art critic whose library of images the "Larry Qualls Archive" (100,000 images documenting 30 years of New York City gallery exhibitions) was acquired ...

Archive (100,000 images documenting 30 years of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

gallery exhibitions); architectural photography from Esto, Canyonlights and ART on FILE; university collections from Harvard and Yale; and historical photo archives such as the National Gallery of Art and

Frick Art Reference Library The Frick Art Reference Library is the research arm of The Frick Collection. Its reference services have temporarily relocated to the Breuer building at 945 Madison Avenue, called Frick Madison, during the renovation of the Frick's historic build ...

, among many others. Tools and features Artstor users have the ability to search, organize, present, upload, and share images. In addition to keyword and advanced searching, users may browse works by geography, classification, or collection name. Users can zoom in on high-resolution images in the image viewer and review related information in image data records. They can also export images for use in classroom presentations and other non-commercial, educational uses, either as JPEGs, or presentations for

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPo ...

2007. Artstor has also developed the Offline Image Viewer (OIV), an alternative tool for giving offline classroom presentations. OIV allows users to download much larger images from Artstor, combine Artstor images with their own content to create digital slide show presentations that feature side-by-side comparisons, zooming and panning, and the ability to customize text on the slides. OIV enables instructors to give reliable classroom presentations using both high-resolution Artstor images and local content without being connected to the Internet. The Artstor Digital Library is accessible through Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android-powered devices, providing read-only features such as searching and browsing, zooming, and viewing saved image groups.

Shared Shelf

Artstor also provides Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and digital media management software service that allows institutions to catalog, edit, store, and share local collections. Shared Shelf was launched in 2011. Artstor worked with ten institutional partners to develop this service:

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

Colby College Colby College is a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine. It was founded in 1813 as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, then renamed Waterville College after the city where it resides. The donations of Christian philant ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, Middlebury College,

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

Society of Architectural Historians The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) is an international not-for-profit organization that promotes the study and preservation of the built environment worldwide. Based in Chicago in the United States, the Society's 3,500 members include ...

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...

, and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

Other initiatives

As part of Artstor's mission of using digital technologies to further education, scholarship, and research worldwide, the organization collaborates with other institutions in the community to offer a number of services, many of them free. Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Through a collaboration with Artstor, the

Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a US project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings in order to create a large-scale public digital library. It officially launched on April 18, 2013, after two and a half years of dev ...

(DPLA) is providing free access to more than 10,000 high-quality images and data records from six leading museums: the

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It ...

, the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art, the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The museum's collection was amassed ...

, the

Yale Center for British Art Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

and the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

. Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) Artstor's Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) program makes available publication-quality images for use in scholarly publications free of charge. The IAP program was initiated by the

in 2007 and is now available as an optional service to all museums who contribute images to the Artstor Digital Library. Scholars can access these images through the Artstor Digital Library at subscribing institutions or can request free access to IAP by contacting Artstor. Current IAP contributors include Frank Cancian (

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

) (forthcoming),

Getty Research Institute The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".

, Mellink Archive (

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...

Northwestern University Library Northwestern University Libraries is the main academic library system of Northwestern University. The library holds 7.9 million item including 228,505 maps, 107,446 print journals and 173,089 electronic journals, making it the 11th largest librar ...

Princeton University Art Museum The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...

(forthcoming), the

, and the

. Built Works Registry (BWR) Artstor and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University are collaborating on the creation of the Built Works Registry (BWR), a community-generated data resource for architectural works and the built environment. The BWR's goal is to create the system and tools to enable the gathering and widespread dissemination of a large and growing body of built works information. It will serve scholars, students, educators, librarians, and catalogers from academic and cultural heritage organizations worldwide, and will be openly accessible to the general public. The project is supported by a three-year National Leadership grant awarded by the

Institute of Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the ...

(IMLS). The

(GRI), nine other institutions, and an international advisory board will also participate throughout the three-year project development cycle. BWR data will be contributed to the Getty Vocabulary Program’s Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA) and will be a critical component to the controlled vocabulary warehouse in Shared Shelf. Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive (SAHARA) The SAH Architecture Resources Archive (SAHARA), an online library of architectural and landscape images for research and teaching, is a collaboration among The

(SAH), scholars of architectural history, librarians, and Artstor, funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. EMET (Embedded Metadata Extraction Tool) EMET is a software tool that is freely available for download as a stand-alone application. EMET is intended to facilitate management and preservation of digital images and their incorporation into external databases and applications. EMET was created by Artstor through funding from the

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the United States was an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The program convened several working ...

(NDIIPP). For programmers interested in reviewing and customizing the code, EMET is also available as an open source application on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Arts organizations established in 2004 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Art history Museum organizations American digital libraries Non-profit organizations based in New York (state) Museum informatics