ARTstor

In cooperation with the Art Dept., the Library now hosts a database of fine art images called ARTstor. Here's the scoop from its FAQ webpage,

"ARTstor is a non-profit organization created by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As part of its ongoing effort to become a community resource, ARTstor is developing a rich digital library that will offer coherent collections of art images and descriptive information as well as the software tools to enable active use of the collections. The ARTstor Library's initial content includes approximately 500,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology. ARTstor's software tools support a wide range of pedagogical and research uses including: viewing and analyzing images through features such as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared uses, and creating and delivering presentations both online and offline. This community resource will be made available solely for educational and scholarly uses that noncommercial in nature."

I really haven't tried it yet--this week I hope! But another interesting development is that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is going to work through ARTstor to allow scholars to use print quality images in scholarly books without charging the prices now extorted because of copyright ownership.
Art monographs have always been the scholarly communication in that field and they were becoming scarce because of publishing costs, many of which, though not all, are related to the price of including excellent color images.

Try Artstor under "Articles, Indexes and Databases" on the Library Homepage. js