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Hello all,

I read a lot about how to serve the information /visual literacy needs of studio artists or the students in studio programs. I’m often challenged by questions posed by studio artists on how to use our subscription image databases to search for conceptual topics (e.g. identity or aesthetics) or those that reflect formal aspects of art works (color, perspective, proportion, distortion, etc.). Artstor is often frustrating for this user group when framing searches outside of the art history paradigm. Bridgeman Education is somewhat better in terms of metadata, but other features are not as user-friendly.  Outside of Google, are there other image databases you recommend that retrieve results from a more conceptual framework, beyond author, title, museum collection, medium, country, time period. Will Artstor or Bridgeman be developing a “see more like this” feature that would extend the possibilities of searching beyond one or two known items that do fit the bill once identified?

I showed the painting faculty member the search feature of the Met’s Timeline of Art History, doing a search on “distorted still lifes” and she was happy to see a rich collection of images and references to the essays on cubism, fauvism, etc. Do you have any other strategies for using our major subscription image databases, or using other virtual means to search more abstract concepts by which a student could assemble a corpus of images?  

Margaret D. Ericson|Arts Librarian and Copyright Liaison|Bixler Art and Music Library|Colby College Libraries|5662 Mayflower Hill|Waterville, Maine 04901|

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