Visual Resource Center
The Visual Resource Center (VRC) is a digital and analog image library and a digital document library that also houses the Pat Heller Reading Room and Graduate student study carrels. The VRC is dedicated to supporting the teaching, research, and study needs of faculty and students within the School of Art and the College of Fine Arts by providing image, research, and presentation resources and assistance. Administered by the School of Art, the center’s collection development is founded on curricular need in support of all areas of the school, but primarily focused on the academic units.
- General Info
- Graduate Student Policies
- Resources
- Staff
General Info
Hours
The VRC is located in Room 243 in the Art Building and is open to the academic community from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
After hours access is limited to SOA faculty, TAs and VRC staff only.
Closed on University recognized holidays (see academic calendar for specific dates).
VRC Director
Kimberly Mast kmast@arizona.edu
MLS, MA Art History, PhD Art History and Education
Tel: 520.621.1202
Fax: 520.626.0540
Digital Image Lab and Services
The Visual Resource Center provides a variety of digital services to the School of Art community including, digital image production and access, digital document preparation, technical support and equipment loans.
The digital imaging lab at the VRC is equipped with five Macintosh scanning stations (three flatbed scanners and two slide scanners equipped with film-scanning capabilities). Scanning equipment is available for all SOA student and faculty use. Each computer is available for student use and is equipped with the new Adobe Creative Suite and MS Office Suite.
Digital Image Database Access
The Imagen digital image database is available to faculty and students via the web for research and teaching purposes. Please see a VRC staff member for login and password assignment. Undergraduate web access is available to those currently enrolled in a course within the College of Fine Arts and only for the semester enrolled. Individual student log in IDs and passwords are updated every semester. Faculty and TAs wishing to make Imagen portfolios available to their students must provide a roster of enrolled students to the VRC.We ask that you give us one week’s advance notice. VRC staff are available to come to your class and explain the log in procedure and demonstrate database use. Art History graduate students and faculty may also access the image database at the VRC for their research and study purposes, both on- and off-site. Please see a curatorial staff member for assistance.
Pat Heller Reading Room Collection and Digital Document Database Access
The Pat Heller Reading Room catalog and the digital document database containing scanned PDF articles of course related material can be accessed within the VRC. Books in the Pat Heller collection do not circulate outside of the center, but they can be use in the VRC space and/or scanned if desired.
D2L and Online Course Assistance
Please see the Director, Kimberly Mast, if you need assistance setting up your course in Desire to Learn (D2L) or need assistance with any aspect of the Learning Management System including content, quizzes, discussions, links, textbook integration, or streaming video.
Ordering Images and Documents
The VRC is happy to assist faculty, TAs and graduate students in the creation of digital images and pdf files for teaching and research purposes. Images can be scanned from books or transparencies. Orders must be accompanied by an order sheet, which must be filled out in its entirety. We ask for at least a week lead time when placing your orders, as certain times of the year can become quite busy and last minute orders cannot be guaranteed.
Presentation Assistance
The VRC can provide assistance with presentation materials and programs such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi and other Adobe CC presentation tools. Digital educational resources are also available and can be discussed with the Director.
Purposes of Use
Use of images from the Visual Resource Center’s collections via the Imagen database is limited to educational purposes only as outlined by the Fair Use Guidelines, which are posted in the VRC. Most of the materials in the collection are copyrighted and are subject to copyright restrictions. Copyright legislation restricts the use of copyrighted materials in non-teaching functions.
Graduate Student Policies
Study Carrels/Work Space
All graduate students will be able to request a study space in the VRC and leave books and personal belongings there as needed. Priority is given to Art History students followed by Art and Visual Culture Education students. Please do not leave laptops or other items of significant value in these areas as they are not secure and many people have access to the room.
Computer Use
The Mac workstations in the VRC are open to student use on a first come, first served basis. Please be aware that files download to the desktop and you need to trash any file you don’t want left there for all to see. If you wish to save documents temporarily to the desktop, please create a folder with your name on it and put all files in there. Desktops are purged once a semester and all files deleted unless otherwise requested in advance.
After Hours Access
School of Art Graduate students will be provided with a door code that will allow them after hours use of the VRC facilities as needed. Do not share this code with students or anyone outside of the department for security reasons. Please make sure lights are turned off and the door securely closed when you leave.
Printing
There is a printer available for student use in the computer bay in the VRC. We are not able to network private laptops to printers due to Wi-Fi security, so you must be at the appropriate computer station to print to the attached printer. Please limit printing to 10-15 pages at a time. If you have a large number of pages to print, there is a copy center in the Student Union and a copy machine in the school’s Admin work room.
Resources
In partial fulfillment of the MFA degree, the School of Art requires that documentation of each candidate’s MFA Thesis Exhibition be deposited in the Visual Resources Collection. Candidates should submit ten digital images, via the department dropbox, which documents your work and its installation.
The images should be accompanied by an itemized list providing the following information for each image:
- Title (or Untitled)
- Date
- Medium (or Media)
- Dimensions
This list, along with your exhibition statement and CV should be submitted as an electronic file.
Time-based work may be documented (in video format), along with corresponding written documentation. Written authorization by your Committee Chair is required for the submission of time-based work.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Image files should be saved as tiff files, preferably between 18 and 20 MB, absolutely no less than 12 MB. The filename should be your First Name_LastName_Sequential # of image. The sequential number should match a corresponding number on your image list.
RIGHTS AGREEMENT
There is also a rights agreement, authorizing the school to use the images received for non-commercial educational and promotional uses (e.g. on the school web page, for classroom use, on promotional brochures), that you will be asked to sign at this time. Please turn in all material to the Graduate Program Coordinator.
MFA IMAGE ARCHIVE LINK
Masters and PhD Students in Art History and Art and Visual Culture Education are required to submit a digital copy of their Thesis or Dissertation to the VRC in pdf format
Imagen | University of Arizona, School of Art and College of Architecture, Online Image Database. Authorized Users only.
ARTstor | ARTstor is a non-profit initiative, founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields. The ARTstor Digital Library Charter Collection is a repository of hundreds of thousands of digital images and related data, tools to actively use those images. Authorized/UA users only.
Grove Art Online | The Grove Dictionary of Art is a unique central reference source for the humanities in general: history, geography, theology, anthropology, archaeology, Classics and cultural studies, are some of the fields for which The Dictionary provides a global and in-depth introduction.
Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image resources
The Metropolitan Museum of Art creates, organizes, and disseminates a broad range of digital images documenting the rich history of the Museum, its collection, exhibitions, events, people, and activities. Many of these images are available for personal enjoyment, study, educational purposes, and scholarly publication, according to the Terms and Conditions of this website.
Metropolitan Museum of Art- Art History Timeline | The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.
The Getty Research Institute | Contains terms, names, and other information about people, places, things, and concepts relating to art, architecture, and material culture.
Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) | The AAT is a structured vocabulary database of more than 133,000 terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture.
Union List of Artists, Names (ULAN) | The ULAN is a structured vocabulary containing more than 225,000 names and biographical and bibliographic information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.
Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) | The TGN is a structured, world-coverage vocabulary of 1.3 million names, including vernacular and historical names, coordinates, and place types, and descriptive notes, focusing on places important for the study of art and architecture.
ARTSOURCE | Networked resources on Art and Architecture including libraries, events, images, museum information, exhibitions, etc.
David Rumsey Visual Collections | View maps, fine artwork, photographs and other items from over thirty renowned collections.
Art and Architecture, Courtauld Institute of Art | More than 40,000 images and a network of over half a million links.
ARCHITECTURE
Great Buildings Collection | More than 800 great buildings from around the world and across history are listed below and illustrated at this web with photographic images, architectural drawings, discussion, bibliography, architect info, and live 3D walkthrough computer models.
ArchNET Digital Library | Online community for architects, planners, urban designers, interior designers, landscape architects, and scholars, with a special focus on the Islamic world.
MUSEUMS
United States
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Art Institute of Chicago
Los Angeles Museum of Art
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Nelson Atkins Museum of Art
Smithsonian Museums
England
British Museum, London
British Library, London
France
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Musee d’Orsay, Paris
Spain
Italy
You will find excellent library facilities available at the University of Arizona. The Main Library contains an art book collection consisting of approximately 120,000 volumes and 200 current art journal subscriptions in an overall library collection of approximately 7 million titles. Supporting collections include extensive holdings in facsimile editions and original rare books and manuscripts in Special Collections. New databases and services are added continually to the extremely user-friendly, state-of-the-art system, including internal and external subject searches, access to the catalogs of other university libraries and to a wide range of databases, and to new computerized research tools on a world-wide basis, including Worldcat. An efficient Interlibrary Loan Department makes available materials not in the libraries of the University of Arizona from other national and international collections.
In addition, you can take advantage of the Science-Engineering and Fine Arts Libraries, the former of which houses 20,000 titles and 120 periodicals concerning architectural design, history and theory, graphic communication, history of photography and building technology. The Center for Creative Photography houses works by over 100 famous twentieth-century photographers in its internationally known archival collection of photographs. The Southwest Folklore Center houses tapes and manuscript archives of Southwest music and folklore. The Arizona State Museum, in the center of campus, specializes in prehistoric, prehispanic, and recent Indian cultures of the Southwest and includes the Pal Kelemen Spanish Colonial Art Collection. Its 30,000-volume library specializes in the archaeology and ethnology of the Southwest.
Staff
