Columbia Image Bank Now Contains Over 30,000 Digital Images

The Columbia Image Bank now contains over 30,000 images, offering the campus community a rich collection of digital images of art and architecture. The Image Bank is the Libraries Digital Program initiative to provide a central repository and search system for Columbia's growing digital image collections. 

The premier Columbia Image Bank collection is History of Art and Architecture.  The foundation of this collection consists of high-quality digital images purchased from Saskia, Ltd., a leading vendor of slides and digital images for the art historical community.  This material is especially rich in major works of Western art from antiquity through the 19th century with special emphasis on painting and sculpture. The collection documents works from over one hundred museums, including the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Prado, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Important archaeological sites such are Ephesus, Pergamum, Delphi, and Mycenae are also represented.

Claude Monet Saint-Lazare Station Musee d'Orsay

The History of Art and Architecture collection is being augmented by images from the Visual Media Center (VMC) in the Department of Art History and Archaeology. VMC contributions will include approximately 3000 still images and 1000 Quick Time Virtual Reality panoramas covering the history of architecture from antiquity to the 20th century captured as part of a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The highlights of the architecture material include French and English medieval, Byzantine ecclesiastical buildings, the Ottoman mosques of Istanbul, and the work of Le Corbusier.  The VMC will also seek opportunities to add images of important works of art from all periods and cultures.

Connect to the Columbia Image Bank: http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?ldpd0001

The Columbia Image Bank is hosted locally on the Luna Insight platform, a powerful software system optimized for image retrieval, display and classroom use. More information on Luna Insight software is available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/help/howto/insight/index.html

In addition to the History of Art and Architecture collection, the Libraries have arranged for access to a variety of remote image collections that are made available via the Luna Insight interface, including the AMICA Library. AMICA (Art Museum Images from Cartography Associates) contains over 115,000 art museum images, with an emphasis on objects in American museums including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Connect to the AMICA Library: http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio4229962


More information on the Libraries growing digital image collections can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/eimages/