AAU Library Blog

Come relax after finals at the very first AAU Library Knitting Circle!

Tea and snacks will be provided, and all levels and needle arts are welcome.

When:

Friday May 18th, 2012 from 3-5 pm

Where:

Academy of Art University Library, 180 New Montgomery, 6th Floor

Please contact Abby Dansiger, Visual Resources Librarian, at 415-618-3761 or adansiger@academyart.edu with any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Hey creative writers! Join us this Friday, May 4th at 6:00pm for this year’s PAGE ONE event!

Page One is a literary performance competition held in the AAU Library where students can win cash prizes and recognition for their exceptionally creative submissions! Also, Liberal Arts instructors will be giving their students extra credit for participation. Cash prizes are $100 for first place in each category and $50 for second place in each category. There will also be free snacks and beverages!

The event works like this… Students write one page or the equivalent of 5 minutes spoken (written before the day of the event) in one of three categories: Poetry/Spoken Word, Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction. (No musical performances are allowed.) A panel of judges (consisting of Liberal Arts instructors) will evaluate performances based on the following criteria: originality, language, presentation and clarity of subject. After all the presentations, votes will be tallied, winners announced, and prize money will be given out to the first and second place finishers in each category.

Ten people may sign up for each category, and sign-up sheets are available now in the Library at the circulation desk. BE SURE TO SIGN UP BEFORE 6pm ON FRIDAY!!

Page One will take place on Friday, May 4th from 6:00pm to 9:00pm in the AAU Library. That’s on the 6th floor of the 180 New Montgomery St. building.

For more information, email aferrie@academyart.edu

The library has recently acquired hard copies of A Journal the newsletter produced by the Academy of Art Alumni Association. A Journal features stories and updates about notable Academy alumni and how they are influencing art communities all over the world. You will also find an events calendar, retrospective articles about art and design through the years, messages from President Stephens and more. Ask for it at the Circulation Desk.

You may have noticed that the library currently has a display case filled with Vogue magazines from the 1950s and 1960s by the front desk. These are part of our magazine archive from the 1920s to 1970s which includes Vogue, Time, Western Advertising, L’Officiel, Femme Chic, Album Figaro, and Sunset. These are wonderful resources to browse through for inspiration and entertainment. From flapper dresses to Mad Men era advertisements to disco decor, this collection offers an engaging look back into the 20th century.

These magazines are housed separately from our serials collection. You can access them by going to the MFA desk and selecting the issues you would like to see from the Magazine Archive folder. A member of our library staff will assist in pulling them for you. Three magazines can be checked out at a time to look at in the library in exchange for your ID.

Monet, Claude. Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son. 1875. National Gallery of Art. NGA Images. Web. 23 Mar. 2012.

The AAU Library’s Digital Images page now features an exciting new resource, NGA Images.

NGA Images is a digital image repository created from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This website has over 20,000 images available free of charge to search, share, download and use.

NGA Images is part of the National Gallery of Art’s newly implemented open access policy to provide digital images of artwork believed to be in the public domain and free of any known copyright restrictions.

For more information about this policy and how a work qualifies as open access, please see the “Open Access” section of the NGA Images website.

For more information about the National Gallery of Art, please visit their website at www.nga.gov.

The recent conservation work of the Ghent Altarpiece, the revered polyptych by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, allowed for an unprecedented documentation of the artwork to take place with a remarkable imaging project.

While dismantled, each section of the altarpiece was photographed in high resolution with both regular and infrared light, and then digitally “stitched” together to allow examination of both the surface of the painting and what lies underneath at microscopic levels.

The public can view these incredible final images, as well as learn all about the conservation and documentation methods used, with the new interactive website devoted to the project, “Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece,” courtesy of the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, California.

Verhoeven, Geert. Digital macrophotography, Luc Van Muylem. ca 2011.           Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece. The Getty Foundation. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

The New York Times has launched a new Tumblr blog, The Lively Morgue, devoted to presenting images from their photography archive.

An undated photograph showing New York Times employees tidying negatives in the morgue. The Lively Morgue. The New York Times. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.

It is noted on the blog that the images shared with the public will only be a small sampling from the archive, which is estimated to hold at least 10 million frames. The reverse side of each print will also be digitized and presented with the corresponding image, increasing the historical and research value of this resource.

In addition to The Lively Morgue, The New York Times hosts another blog called Lens. Highlighting the best in photography, video and visual journalism, Lens also features digitized photographs from the pictorial archive.

If you would like to see more historical images from The New York Times, the following title is available for checkout from the AAU Library:

Pictures of the Times :  a century of photography from the New York Times / edited by Peter Galassi and Susan Kismaric

Exhibition Catalogs  TR820.5.P475 1996

Check out the latest offering from the New York Public Library, Stereogranimator, an online tool that allows the public to create animated GIFs and 3D anaglyphs using the NYPL’s collection of historical stereographs.

The original concept came from an independent project by Joshua Heineman, a San Francisco-based artist and writer. Using the NYPL’s archival collection of digitized stereographs available to the public, Heineman began creating animated versions of the images and posting them to his blog, Cursive Buildings, under the project title Reaching for the Out of Reach.

Using Heineman’s project as the inspiration, the NYPL Labs created Stereogranimator so everyone can compose and share their own animated images. In addition to the animated GIFs, Stereogranimator will also generate anaglyphs, shifted two-tone images that require either a stereoscope or vintage 3D glasses to properly view in focus.

The following titles are available for checkout from the AAU Library if you would like to learn more about stereographs and 3D photography:

Stereo photography : an introduction to stereo photo technology and practical suggestions for stereo photography / by Fritz G. Waack

Circulating Stacks  TR780.W32 1985

The world of 3-D : a practical guide to stereo photography / by Jac. G. Ferwerda

Circulating Stacks  TR780.F47 1987

The world of stereographs / William C. Darrah

Circulating Stacks  TR780.D35

Caldecott Award winning children’s books illustrator and author Chris Van Allsburg, as well as children’s book author Lemony Snicket (Daniel Holder) will be interviewed at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, Saturday, November 12.

Van Allsburg’s book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick has been re-released with short stories by authors Stephen King, Sherman Alexie, Jon Scieszka, and others.

The Academy of Art University Library has several of Chris Van Allsburg books, including the original version of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and Caldecott Medal winners The Polar Express and Jumanji.

            

See all of Chris Van Allsburg books available the Academy of Art University Library.

The interviews will take place at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, November 12, 2:00pm – 4:30pm in the Koret Auditorium. More information can be found here.

WilsonWeb’s Art Full Text, OmniFile, and Cinema Image Gallery databases will soon be switching over to the EBSCO platform. You will still have access to all of the same magazines and journals, but the interface for searching these databases will be the same as the EBSCO database (check out our Communication and Mass Media Complete EBSCO database to see what the interface is like).

***Please Note***
If you are a user of My WilsonWeb, please note, you will no longer have access to My WilsonWeb after the switch to EBSCO is made. If you use My WilsonWeb please export or save any articles that you need. You may also want to note any saved searches that you have been using for your research. EBSCO has a similar My EBSCOhost account, but there will be no way to transfer your My WilsonWeb account to the new EBSCO account.

If you have any questions about your My WilsonWeb account or about the switch in general, please contact Holly Gatto, the Systems and Online Resources Librarian.

As soon as our databases are available through EBSCO we will post additional links on the Online Resources web page and on this blog.