Columbia Image Bank: AHAR Art History and Archaeology Collection

The Visual Media Center (VMC) in the Department of Art History and Archaeology is creating a digital image collection for the Columbia Image Bank, AHAR: Art History and Archaeology, dedicated to supporting the teaching and research needs of the department. The AHAR collection is developed by staff of the VMC under the auspices of a faculty oversight committee and in conjunction with policies established by the Libraries

Accessible through Luna Insight, AHAR shares cataloging and imaging standards with the Libraries’ Columbia Image Bank collection.  The AHAR collection supports specific curricular requirements for the Columbia and Barnard art history departments based on individual faculty requests.  The collection is further supplemented by a development strategy designed to acquire comprehensive sets of images reflecting faculty areas of expertise as well as current and emerging trends in art historical scholarship to assist in graduate student training.  Special emphasis will be placed on obtaining high-resolution digital images to take advantage of the display features available through the Insight system for classroom presentation.  Most importantly, Insight offers a zoom function that allows detailed examination of images for discussion of stylistic evolution, connoisseurship, technique, physical condition and iconographic analysis.  As the Columbia digital image collections grow, they will supplant the analog slide and study photograph collections, which are among the largest such collections in the nation totaling more than 600,000 items.

More information on the AHAR collection and Luna Insight can be found at

http://www.learn.columbia.edu/insight/index.html

For further information please contact Robert Carlucci, Director, Visual Media Center, rc456@columbia.edu