Error during command authentication.

                Thanks so much, Mr. Most.  Yes, that was indeed my question.  Though I am always interested in being introduced to yet another handy image bank (!!!), I was asking this time about those that classify using ICONCLASS.

Thanks to someone else on this list I’ve just heard from Leslie Rahuba of UVa, who, if I’ve understood her correctly, says that UVa’s contribution to ARTstor includes this capacity, as you suggest might be the case in your first paragraph.  I was culpably ignorant of this as a feature of ARTstor subsets (as distinguished from the database as a whole), and, so, will have to give that a try.

Meanwhile, you take the whole discussion to another level altogether.

                It seems to me that I’ve asked this of the list before to no effect, but I’m a self-taught (and therefore still rank) amateur in this area.  So what are the first-rate advanced schools or workshops in image research that I could attend?  (I guess I should really ask this of ACRL IGIR.)

I think the question Mr. Perisho posed was more about which image archives used an ICONCLASS number as search criteria. Although a few of the ARTstor collections might possibly have this iconographical search capability, I think most institutional image databases do not. The question Mr. Perisho posed is intriguing though, and the results of his query will interest a lot of us.

Without getting in to my own lack of interest in ICONCLASS (due to being tormented by it at the Cleveland Museum of Art as a baby photo librarian) I do think that ICONCLASS really makes no sense in the computer age except for its  rather basic hierarchical control of iconographical terms. One of the limitations of ICONCLASS is that is only reflects Western art, and that it may have only been applied with semblance of comprehension to Northern Art (most famously with the RKD’s “Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries” also known as  D.I.A.L.) Anyone who has had to use it extensively will tell you that ICONCLASS was cumbersome until you learned the “language” and could recognize the structure of the system without having to constantly refer back to the indices for help. Quite a few years ago at an ARLIS conference, I recall a presenter (was it Eileen Fry?)  including ICONCLASS numbers as a field in a discussion on metadata, probably  since there was no other controlled set of terms for iconography.

Like most image databases,  the NGA utilized a variety of sources (mostly AAT and LCSH ) for subject headings but relied on local use for iconography terms  hoping that a Boolean search  of a combination of terms would get users to the image they required. (e.g. Noah and Deluge). It is imperfect but functional. One area that has yet to be truly tackled by art information professionals and art historians is creating an AAT-like iconographical thesaurus for world art (perhaps using ICONCLASS as a starting point?). I suspect that there are too few Pandoras out there willing to open THAT box, no matter how fascinating the process might be.

Steve,

I loved your question about image archives. The number is vast.  Below are some resources.

ARTstor  http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml

SAHARA http://www.sah.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=HOME&category=Sahara%20HOME

Aga Khan Visual Archive at MIT http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?pid=60949&sid=448079

List of other lists http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/findimages.html   and http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/findimages2.html

Pauline Saliga

Society of Architectural Historians

Friends:

                Those of you who specialize in image research will think this a stupid question, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

                Does anybody out there maintain a reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date list of image banks searchable by ICONCLASS “number,” whether freely accessible or proprietary?  I have written the folks at ICONCLASS i.e. RKD itself twice now in the hope that it maintains such an inventory, but to no reply.  Meanwhile my schedule hasn’t allowed for a painstaking and systematic process of discovery.

                Here is my own pathetic little list, which I’m hoping desperately to enlarge.  It grows very indirectly on the fly, and is strongest in my own areas of actual research.  ANY additions, even those supplied not (as above) comprehensively but in an ad hoc fashion (including those naming but a single image bank specific to a given collection (a given museum, just for example)), would be most welcome.

·         Arkyves:  A Database of Early Modern Imagery, http://www.arkyves.org/

·         Art in the Christian Tradition, Jean and Alexander Heard/Divinity Library, Vanderbilt University, http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-search.pl

·         De bijbel in de Nederlandse cultuur, http://www.bijbelencultuur.nl/

·         Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, http://www.bildindex.de/#|home

·         Imaging the Bible in Wales Database, http://imagingthebible.llgc.org.uk/

·         Index of Christian Art, whose own subject headings are cross-referenced to ICONCLASS numbers

·         Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Koninklijke Bibliotheek / National Library of the Netherlands, http://www.kb.nl/manuscripts/

·         http://collecties.meermanno.nl/handschriften/search

·         Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) Database, http://english.rkd.nl/Databases/RKDimages

Probably this has been asked before, so my apologies in advance.

Many thanks!

Steve Perisho

Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Seattle Pacific University

Tel.:  206 281 2417; Fax:  206 281 2396

Email:  [log in to unmask]

Commonplace book:  http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org/join.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.arlisna.org Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org/join.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.arlisna.org Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org/join.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.arlisna.org Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~