Britain from Above offers historic aerial photographs

The digital project Britain from Above currently contains over 16,000 images (taken between 1919-1953) from the Aerofilms Collection, an important and early aerial photography collection in the United Kingdom. Browse images by group, location or tags, or search by coordinates, date, or text. Users are free to download images or add tags; in fact, the site is asking for the public’s help in identifying unlocated images or sharing factual information about any image or the places and things within it.

via ArtDaily

New origin date of the Red Dot discovered!

We thought we’d launched in 2009, but apparently our history goes back a bit further than that.  Recent cave painting discoveries put us at 40,000 years old!   It’s weird – why can’t we remember. . . .

via the BBC news site

artlibraries.net, a virtual catalogue for art history

The ”meta catalogue” artlibraries.net searches through more than 12 million records across 45 libraries. The records include books, articles (in periodicals, conference papers, festschriften, and exhibition books/catalogues), some archival and photographic materials and online resources. Users can also choose searches from particular libraries or return only digital media. For tips on searching through the multi-language catalogue, click here.

An app to keep you writing: Write or Die

If you suffer from writer’s block, or just need to put “the ‘prod’ in Productivity,” there’s an app for that: Write or Die. The app (for iPad or desktop) works when you preset goals with “consequences for distraction and procrastination” if they are not met. You can even set different modes for the consequences, including Gentle, Normal, or Kamikaze (this last one’s merciless: you have to keep writing or your work will unwrite itself).

via LA Times

Treasure trove of prints discovered at NY Public Library

An enormous and valuable stash of images comprising “a visual encyclopedia” of the US in the 1930s and ’40s has been re-discovered.  It comprises 41,000 photographs by Roy Stryker, the founder of the Farm Security Administration’s photography documentation project, now at the Library of Congress.  (The 175,000-image FSA collection includes the iconic Dorthea Lange “Dustbowl Family” photos as well as many other highly reproduced images.)  This initial batch of 41,000 was stored at the New York Public Library, and got waylaid as the LC project moved forward.  Incredibly these photos could be signed out by any library patron.  In 2005 it was discovered that many of these NYPL photos were not in the LC collection, so they are now being digitized and added; the first 1,000 are available here, together with the rest of the FSA material.   Read more of this great story here through the NY Times.

More Google news: The World Wonders Project

Google’s World Wonders Project, together with partners UNESCO and World Monuments Fund among others, offers armchair travelers an opportunity to experience the built environment in far flung places throughout the globe. The project, once again utilizing Street View, is searchable by location or theme. Additionally, many sites feature videos and user-submitted photography.

The Getty Research Portal has launched

Finally!  After much anticipation, the Getty Research Portal, developed by the Getty Research Institute, is available.  It contains links to over 20,000 art history titles, from the Getty and eight other institutions, with plans to keep on growing.    And, it’s endorsed by our own Prof. Ann Jensen Adams!

A Guide to Art Photography in Museums

Trying to capture images of works of art in museums is a tricky business, which prompted Robert Baldwin, Associate Professor of Art History at Connecticut College, to develop a Guide to Art Photography in Museums (pdf), which covers equipment, image file type, and other useful tips. The guide can also be found on Professor Baldwin’s website, Social History of Art, where he also posts his own digital images, sample syllabi and other teaching tools for public use (with attribution).