digital collections – ARLIS/NA Multimedia & Technology Reviews

June 2026

June - 2026June - 2026 Matthew Garklavs

We’re pleased to announce the release of the June 2026 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews!

The June 2026 issue of M&TR highlights digital resources that were originally supported by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In light of the significant cuts affecting this federal agency, M&TR invited reviewers to reflect on the impact of federal funding on libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions through the examples listed below.

We encourage you to explore the current reviews by following the DOI links provided and join the conversation on how technology continues to shape the future of art and cultural heritage. You can also browse the full archive of our reviews on the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

Archives Research Compute Hub

Reviewed by: Raeshelle Cooke

The Archives Research Compute Hub (ARCH) is an open-source platform for research and teaching that allows users to work with large digital collections using computational methods. The website is set up to include high quality datasets (collections, pdfs, images, full text, network visualizations, speech, and other file formats) from sites like Archive.org, Wayback Machine, and Vault, etc.; these datasets can immediately be used for analysis and research. ARCH allows researchers and teachers to access various archival collections across the internet, develop and disseminate datasets, and receive technical support when they need it.
See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/1vsy4-hsj30

The COVID-19 Web Archive

Reviewed by: Patrick Cassidy

The COVID-19 Web Archive lists over 70,000 websites, maintained through the Internet Archive’s “Archive-It”, (commonly known as the Way Back Machine), and grouped into various topical “collections” that attempt to record these events. The web resources were originally documented by other libraries, archives, and cultural heritage organizations in order to archive the changing data, the creative works, and general responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services American Rescue Plan grant program, these resources are now retrievable via a searchable database.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/n0w2t-sab97

En Foco

Reviewed by: Stephanie Morgan

The En Foco website presents a comprehensive digital platform dedicated to supporting and amplifying the work of U.S.-based photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander heritage. Founded in 1974, En Foco functions as both an advocacy organization and a cultural archive, offering access to exhibitions, publications, and digitized resources that document the contributions of historically underrepresented artists. Through its website, En Foco brings together exhibitions, publications, fellowships, and archival resources, positioning itself as both a support structure for artists and a resource for research and teaching.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/60r74-5ws61

Ashbery Resource Center/The Flow Chart Foundation

Reviewed by: Eleanor Morgan

The Ashbery Resource Center (ARC) is the library and special collections of the Flow Chart Foundation, a private operating foundation based in Hudson, New York, that stewards the personal archives of the poet John Ashbery. The ARC’s comprehensive collection of Ashbery’s influential creative work and biographical information is freely available to browse via its online catalog.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/tnyhq-h7835

Princeton Art Museum

Reviewed by: Mikayla Bryant

The Princeton University Art Museum is an academically based, public facing institution whose ethos is to challenge the students at Princeton University and members of the diverse local, national, and international publics through exposure to the world of art. With a grant received through the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, The Princeton University Art Museum created a site that does a fantastic job in creating evocative programming and interactive shows.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/naa3x-jh220

Queens Memory Project

Reviewed by: Beth Mawhinney

The Queens Memory Project is a community archiving initiative that collects personal histories, photographs, ephemera, and records of contemporary life in Queens, New York. A collaboration between the Queens Public Library and Queens College, the initiative functions as a hub that brings together a range of platforms and activities, including its website, interactive tools, oral history and personal archiving events, and access points to collection materials through digital archives and audiovisual platforms. It is designed to both build collections and engage the community in contributing to and shaping a shared historical record.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/4kw76-f8j22

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library & Archives

Reviewed by: Chelsea L. Gizzi

In 2012, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Library & Archives opened in a newly-constructed building shared with Cuyahoga Community College. By making accessible a collection about “the people, events, and songs that shape our world,” this repository of over 30,000 items realizes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s wider mission of teaching and inspiring visitors through “the power of rock and roll.”

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/rqeq0-ppe34

The Poet’s House

Reviewed by: Isabelle Sakelaris

Poets House, a specialized poetry library and community space, has recently updated its online catalog, making all of its library materials acquired since 2012 searchable online for the first time. Previously acquired materials are also being added to the online catalog on an ongoing basis, along with new acquisitions. The general collection spans centuries of poetry, including works in translation, as well as works in languages other than English. Poets House also maintains multiple special collections, such as an extensive collection of chapbooks, a broadsides collection, and its digital archive.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/hw7yf-2js49

Welo Hou – Bishop Museum

Reviewed by: Jacquelyn H. Clements

Welo Hou is a blog produced by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum to document an historic collection of mele, which are Hawaiian chants, songs, and poems. This resource was funded in part by a 2017 Native Hawaiian Library Services Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), acknowledged on the right column of each blog post.

See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/x88nx-46m21

June 2025

June - 2025June - 2026 Matthew Garklavs

We’re pleased to announce the release of the June 2025 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews (MTR), now available online.

This issue explores the timely and resonant theme of Preserving Cultural Heritage, a topic MTR has addressed in depth across previous issues. We invite you to explore the current reviews by following the links in the images below or by using the DOI link provided.

You can also browse the full archive of our reviews on the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

As part of this theme, we’re highlighting a few past reviews that remain especially relevant. Here are some honorable mentions we encourage you to revisit:

Digital Benin
Mapping Philippine Material Culture
Missouri Remembers, Artists in Missouri through 1951
¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now
Visualizing the Virus

Archive of Destruction

Reviewed by: Bridget O’Keefe

The Archive of Destruction is an idiosyncratic digital repository that presents histories of public art and narratives around the concept of destruction. The creators characterize the resource as a global collection of modern and contemporary artwork, showcasing narratives of ‘vulnerability, interference, rage, fear, boredom, and love. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/0x8h0-gs125

Cultural gems

Reviewed by: Campbell Garland

Begun in 2018, Cultural gems functions as a map application mapping out monuments, historical sites, and cultural institutions within the European Union. This site is run by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, an organization focused on promoting scientific research and collaboration. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/bgj5v-ee815

Cultures in Crisis

Reviewed by: Carol Ng-He

Culture in Crisis is a free digital portal developed by the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) that records heritage protection projects from around the world. Launched in December 2019, the portal is considered to be the world’s largest and most accessible database on the subject.See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/2b0es-z5879

Digital Transgender Archive

Reviewed by: Leo Krakowsky

The Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is a key resource for primary research in queer and trans studies. The scope of its content and usage is timely and important in the current political climate, with applicability to a variety of library patrons. The DTA’s interface is clean and easy to understand, with impressive functionalities for search. Whether the user has an extensive background in transgender studies and topics, or is just beginning to familiarize themselves with this field, this resource’s content is offered in a clear and findable format. Particularly, the glossaries and lesson-planning guides are informative and helpful. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/p5bcv-hxm16

dPlan|ArtsReady

Reviewed by: Carrie B. Evans

dPlan|ArtsReady is an emergency preparedness tool designed to help arts and cultural heritage organizations assess their disaster response plans, identify areas for improvement, retrieve important documents, and access expert resources. The platform can serve a range of organizations and is available in free or paid versions. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/9vhvc-wsf26

Lost Art Database

Reviewed by: Stephanie Morgan

The Lost Art Database, developed by the German Lost Art Foundation, is a publicly accessible digital platform dedicated to documenting cultural property that was expropriated due to Nazi persecution between 1933 and 1945, or displaced as a result of World War II. The site contains thousands of entries, divided into Search Requests for missing cultural assets and Found-Object Reports for those that may have problematic provenance. The resource serves as a tool for restitution efforts and provenance research. It is designed to benefit scholars, institutions, and individuals seeking to trace displaced objects or claim lost heritage. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/g1542-btv17

Museum of Looted Antiquities

Reviewed by: Samie Konet

The Museum of Looted Antiquities (MoLA) is a virtual gallery dedicated to the intricacies of tracing the smuggling, looting, purchase, and eventual return of antiquities repatriated since 1950. With contributions from community members–academics, lawyers, museum professionals–MoLA presents a comprehensive collection of trafficked antiquities with over 100 publicly available entries. Created to consolidate documentation tracing an artifact’s journey from its looting to eventual repatriation, MoLA aspires to preserve all records of ownership and exchange of an object for future research. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/87qxg-82r44

NuevaYorkinos

Reviewed by: Laura Michael

A crowd-sourced digital archival initiative and multimedia project, NuevaYorkinos depicts everyday histories through photographs of Caribbean and Latino people living in all five boroughs of New York. The resource consists of community submissions, and each photograph is often accompanied by a written story or memory from its owner. The purpose of this digital archive is to visually document the quotidian lives of Latinos in NYC through an overall ethos of community history and storytelling. NuevaYorkinos has a wide scope, inviting submissions of photos and videos dated before 2010 from anyone of Caribbean or Latino descent. On its website, the photographic archive is organized by borough. With over 1,000 entries, most contributions are concentrated in Manhattan, and are mainly from the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Founded by Djali Brown-Cepeda and Ricardo Castañeda, this multimedia project also includes virtual exhibitions, a free educational journal called Rooted, and in-person events. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/em8xc-nvb02

Queer Zine Archive Project

Reivewed by: Alex Austin

The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) is an online blog and archive that contains fully digitized and browsable zines about queer subjects, available free to the public. Behind the digitized collection lives a physical archive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, though the website serves as the primary mode of access. QZAP describes their intended audience as, “other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest [in] DIY publishing and underground queer communities.”
See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/83bj5-6ks19

Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online

Reviewed by: Ruth Thomas

In February of 2022, Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine. Less than two weeks later, an initiative emerged on the internet, founded by digital historians, librarians, and archivists to protect culturally significant materials from Ukraine from being lost in the conflict: Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO). With over 1,500 international volunteers contributing over 50TB of data, SUCHO aims to preserve digital and digitized records from Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions at risk of destruction due to war. With implications for those concerned with digital preservation, cultural memory, and post-custodial models of stewardship, SUCHO is a striking example of a responsive, community-driven archival initiative. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/xtg1e-ekq04

Sudan Memory

Reviewed by: Reinhardt Schuhmann

The Sudan Memory project is a digital collection that preserves and promotes cultural materials from and about Sudan. Begun in 2018, it’s a collaboration between Sudanese and international partners, including Sudaak, the National Records Office of Sudan, and King’s College London. Materials are sourced from public and private collections, many at risk of being lost due to the ongoing Sudanese civil war. Collections come from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, The National Records Office of Sudan, The Sudan Archeological Research Society, Tales of Jewish Sudan, and University of Khartoum. The platform offers a vast collection of digitized materials, including images, films, manuscripts, and oral histories, spanning over 6,000 years of Sudanese history. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/3w9qy-x9786

Talking Objects Archive

Reviewed by: Shira Atkinson

The Talking Objects Archive (TOA) includes objects from international museum collections in Europe and Africa. It is a publicly available, free resource newly launched on January 17, 2025, aimed at researchers and artists. The website is available to view in English, French and German. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/qy5s9-s7c82

December 2024

December - 2024December - 2024 Abigail Walker

We’re excited to announce the December 2024 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews. Follow the links in the images below or click the DOI link directly to read the reviews. You can find the full backlist of our reviews in the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

Landing page of the database with search filters at left. — The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

The page includes links to the archive and maps sections, plus opportunities to get involved. An engraving shows enslaved persons working as blacksmiths. — The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

The VDB home page, featuring rows of video thumbnails below a menu. — Video Data Bank Educational Streaming Platform

The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

Reviewed by: Emily Stein

The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture is a database presenting
the holdings of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, housed at the Louvre in Paris, in 1715 and 1781. It accumulates records for 653 fine and decorative art objects acquired by the Academy and enables the user to curate one’s own experience in French or in English, providing a singular resource for anyone researching eighteenth century French art and institutions. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/ey97w-ev378

Black Craftspeople Digital Archive

Reviewed by: Hannah Fountain

Through the power of primary source documents, the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive (BCDA)
seeks to enhance knowledge of the Black craftspeople who produced much of the American South’s prized goods and wares from 1619 on. Archival materials cited in the database are largely sourced from historic newspapers and U.S. Census data, focused on craftspeople working in South Carolina and Tennessee during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/g2k24-1t004

Common Dimensions

Reviewed by: Fiona Hibbard

Common Dimensions is a unique platform dedicated to investigating the expressions of the chair as an object of study. This primarily online resource also offers a print publication by the same name. Each modality examines what makes a chair a chair. Common Dimensions is a predominantly digital resource, and has a variety of content including a visual archive, interviews, and a collection of text. Through these resources, users are encouraged to explore the material, cultural, and political dimensions of the chair. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/7fgwq-t5321

Fragmentarium

Reviewed by: Friedrich Sarah E. Thompson

Fragmentarium is an online repository for digitized medieval manuscript fragments run by the
Manuscript Research Centre at the University of Fribourg. Unlike many other online platforms for
digitized manuscripts (like DigiVatLib, RIALFrI, or DIAMM), Fragmentarium’s focus is on manuscripts that exist only in fragmentary form, regardless of origin or host institution. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/4xn7x-hc645

Hammer Online Collections

Reviewed by: Maya Lekach

Hammer Online Collections is a free digital resource from the Hammer Museum at UCLA, which
provides public access to the museum’s diverse holdings and data. The resource provides access to
roughly 50,000 works from the museum’s collection including over 8,000 open-source images as well as video recordings of past artist programs. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/j22cs-hbd22

Renaissance Polychrome Sculpture

Reviewed by: Stephanie Morgan

The Renaissance Polychrome Sculpture databases for Tuscany, Lombardy and Piedmont, and Puglia and Basilicata hosted by Queen’s University form an extensive, ongoing project to document
Renaissance and Baroque polychrome sculptures in Italy. Each database contains high-resolution
photographs, interactive maps, and detailed information for over 600 sculptures in total, offering
scholars, educators, and students valuable open-access resources. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/nzq2t-c9882

Video Data Bank Educational Streaming Platform

Reviewed by: Garrett M. Rosenblum

The Video Data Bank Educational Streaming Platform is a new subscription-based resource from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (SAIC) Video Data Bank (VDB). VDB has been a leading resource for videos by and about artists since 1976. Their vast collections include over 6,000 titles of video art, experimental films, documentaries, and artist interviews, showcasing artworks from 1970 to the present. VDB’s Streaming Platform currently provides access to over 2,000 titles from this collection. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/7m7jg-9xd82

September 2024

September - 2024October - 2024 Virginia Kerr

We’re excited to announce the September 2024 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews. Follow the links from each title below or click the DOI link directly to read the reviews. You can find the full backlist of our reviews in the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

Home page of the library guide — **All Aspects of Color Resources**

Home page of Bloomsbury Fashion Central with an About description — **All Aspects of Color Resources**

All Aspects of Color Resources, a Research Guide

Reviewed by: Michele Jennings

New York Public Library’s All Aspects of Color Resources research guide–attributed to Arezoo Moseni at Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library–provides an excellent starting point for researchers of historical, theoretical, psychological, and technical aspects of color. It mostly features print books from NYPL’s circulating collections, with a page dedicated to online resources ranging from ebooks to museums and foundations dedicated to artists and designers known for exploration of color. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/w6k6-cs52

Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library

Reviewed by: Hailey Joannah Byrd

Launched in June of 2023, Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library is the newest addition to Bloomsbury’s Fashion Central collection that features resources across the fields of costume history, making, and design. The library is focused on an interdisciplinary and object-based approach to historical fashion research, a practice that has been rising in popularity. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/5qkw-7c55

Fashion Calendar Research Database

Reviewed by: Erin Carney

The Fashion Calendar Research Database (FCRD) is a digitized archive showcasing the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Ruth Finley Collection, an extensive archive which includes her publications Fashion Calendar, Home Furnishings Calendar, and Fashion International. Published between 1941 and 2014, these periodicals document decades of fashion and design history. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/7dtd-rc65

Glossary of Early Modern Popular Print Genres

Reviewed by: Bridget O’Keefe

The Glossary of Early Modern Popular Print Genres identifies and describes terms related to European print culture between 1500-1900. The digital glossary encompasses terms in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. This state-of-the-art database foregrounds both the materiality and the intellectual content of Early Modern Print culture, illuminating historical knowledge dissemination and cultural exchange. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/texp-n256

International Dunhuang Programme

Reviewed by: Ann Bell

The revamped International Dunhuang Programme (IDP) website unifies digital resources from 35 partner institutions worldwide to enhance appreciation of the history and culture of the Eastern Silk Roads. In the early 1900s Mogao Cave 17, sealed for nearly 1000 years, was discovered near Dunhuang, an oasis town serving as a major nucleus of trade and religion along China’s Silk Road. In addition to textiles, paintings, and small wooden statues, thousands of manuscripts quickly earned the grotto the informal title of “Library Cave.” In 1994, the International Dunhuang Programme (IDP) formed, collaborating to catalog, conserve, and promote scholarly research of the Silk Road. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/b8d9-md21

MoCDA Museum of Contemporary Digital Art

Reviewed by: Maria Ketcham

Museum of Contemporary Digital Art (MoCDA), established in 2019, is an online museum of digital works that serves to promote the understanding, enjoyment, preservation and protection of digital art. Their website showcases digital art selected “from a representative and diverse group of digital artists that are deemed the best of historical and contemporary art,” and offers a wealth of information on a variety of artists working in digital formats. Most of the work featured is NFT art. See full review at: https://doi.org/10.17613/cwxp-rc81

June 2024

May - 2024May - 2024 Abigail Walker

We’re excited to announce the June 2024 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews. Follow the links from each title below or click the DOI link directly to read the reviews. You can find more of our reviews in the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

Artstor on Jstor

Artstor is a not-for-profit that emerged in the 1990s as a response to a need to migrate analog slide collections into digital formats. With millions of images from institutions worldwide, Artstor has content spanning cultures and periods. The Artstor website will be retired as of August 1, 2024 and the content has been migrated to the JSTOR platform. This new experience will combine cross-disciplinary content onto one platform. JSTOR offers scholarship and primary resources, which can now be discovered, saved, compared, and presented alongside Artstor’s image collections. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/08h6-nq46

BASIRA: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art

BASIRA (Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art) is a cross-disciplinary resource that identifies and describes thousands of images of books and other textual documents in the figurative arts between approximately 1300 and 1600 CE. The site unites the history of art and print media during the period when moveable type and the printing press facilitated the final important advance of books as knowledge containers, and is an outstanding model of digital humanities. The site bridges visual and material culture. Analyzing the symbolic role of bound and unbound documents in paintings, it reveals how these forms amplify the act of looking by drawing the viewer’s attention to the internal life of individuals observing, holding, or reading books. At the same time, intriguingly, the site flips the usual relationship between word and image. Whereas the verbal is typically a means of analyzing the visual, here a visual form provides information about a verbal one, drawing the user’s attention to what can be learned about the materiality of the depicted books and other documents. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/f3h3-gm37

Digital Florentine Codex

Digital Florentine Codex is a unique resource for scholars at all levels, allowing free public access to and engagement with this encyclopedic work documenting Aztec life in 1500s Mexico. No doubt this resource will inspire a new audience for this remarkable historic work, and enable users to make new connections and explore this treasure trove of content in countless ways. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/zx2w-p982

Perspectives on Data

Perspectives on Data, published as a digital book by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022, “explores the potentials and pitfalls of using data-oriented approaches in art, art history, and museums.” Articles focus on the choices involved in metadata creation and data translation. While especially applicable to professionals creating and managing metadata, these arguments are relevant to any user of information retrieval systems, stressing the notion that since humans shape data, data necessarily embodies human values. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/n9vf-xw05

September 2023 Issue

September - 2023September - 2023 Virginia Kerr

We’re excited to announce the September 2023 issue of Multimedia & Technology Reviews. Follow the links from each title below or click the DOI link directly to read the reviews. You can find more of our reviews in the ARLIS/NA Commons CORE Repository.

Digital Benin

Digital Benin is a stunning example of a centralized digital platform for displaced, translocated collection objects. The clearly articulated interface and robust, well-researched content powerfully reconnect “objects looted by British forces from the Kingdom of Benin (now Edo State, Nigeria) in February 1897,” representing over 5000 objects across 131 institutions in 20 countries. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/2xcb-p513

The Imitation Game: Digital Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The website of The Imitation Game is an intellectual entry point to–and an artifact of–an exhibition of the same name, staged at the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia in 2022. Deriving its title from mathematician Alan Turing’s famous test of computer intelligence, the project delves into utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the production of art, architecture, and other creative works. The site presents a chronological overview starting in the 1950s, leading to a particular focus on the past ten years of AI-related creative works. The website’s authors assert that “today it is reasonable to say that AI is a critical component of any creative practice.” See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/6cb1-z478

Project Himalayan Art

Project Himalayan Art is an interdisciplinary resource created by the Rubin Museum of Art that seeks to encourage educators to incorporate materials relating to Himalayan, Tibetan, and Inner Asian art and cultures into their curricula. This initiative has online, print, and in-person components, including the book Himalayan Art in 108 Objects; a traveling exhibition to appear at five different U.S. locations from 2023 – 2026; and a digital platform. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/7rn9-yj39

Focus on Japanese Photography, a Digital Publication from SFMOMA

Focus on Japanese Photography (FJP) is a digital publication from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art sharing recent research on Japanese photography from the post-war era onward. The publication features eleven photographers from the SFMOMA collection. Edited by curator emerita of photography, Sandra S. Phillips, contributors include curators and doctoral students from the United States, Canada, and Japan. Originally launched in 2017, an expanded iteration of FJP launched in February 2022. FJP is a sort of semi-static online catalog, organized and reading much like a traditional print publication but more readily accessible for updates and includes audiovisual content. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/9ra1-gp48

Virtual St. Paul’s Cathedral Project

The Virtual St. Paul’s Cathedral Project utilizes both visual and acoustic modeling to offer a new dimension to understanding historical public worship within the Church of England in real time. The multi-year project developed at North Carolina State University utilizes computer-based models aimed to accurately depict the cathedral architecture from historical records, and recreate the experience of services during Spring 1624 and Fall 1625. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/chaw-j639

Secondary Archive

Secondary Archive is a web-based platform documenting information about women artists from central and east Europe, from the 1930s through the present. The site’s name references Simone de Beauvoir’s monograph The Second Sex, which states that women are secondary to men in their very existence. There is a second secondary meaning in which the countries of central and eastern Europe are not often included with the so-called first world of the West. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/7g2g-sa79

Missouri Remembers, Artists in Missouri Through 1951

Missouri Remembers: Artists in Missouri through 1951 is a free online resource funded the Missouri Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, launched to coincide with the state’s Bicentennial in 2021. Three institutions–Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Kansas City Art Institute; and the St. Louis Public Library–collaborated to bring Missouri Remembers to fruition, and the site provides a model of how the sharing of resources can result in a richer, more comprehensive product than can be created by an individual organization. See full review at https://doi.org/10.17613/2rs8-2n59

Digital Cicognara Library

August - 2022August - 2022 Alexandra Provo

Reviewed by:
Natalia Lonchyna
Retired Librarian (formerly at the North Carolina Museum of Art)
nlonchyna@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.17613/qjwv-4r86

Libraries are all about accessibility. One may have the most beautiful library in the world and yet, if no one knows about it, it is only available to those who can physically be in the space and experience the tomes tactilely. We now live in the exciting time of digital resources which has made a significant difference to scholarship, has made resources available to those who lack the funds to travel, and has opened an incredible world to all researchers for scholars and amateurs alike. Although the experience of seeing a book in person is always preferable, it is quite remarkable to have access to such treasure troves as the Digital Cicognara Library.

Count Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834) was a renowned art historian who amassed over 5,000 books in his library collection–art, art history, archeology, and related disciplines. Cicognara published an inventory of his library collection, Catalogo ragionato de’ libri d’arte e di antichità. This serves as the guide to his collection which was purchased in its entirety by Pope Leo X and became part of the Vatican Library. Phillip and Reina Fehl began a decades-long project to produce a microfiche collection of the contents. Subsequently, the microfiche collection and digitized books held in participating libraries became the Digital Cicognara Library.

This digital resource is available free of charge and is easy to navigate and search. In addition to the search box, the homepage provides the following headers: About (history of Cicognara and his library), Community (participating institutions), Contact (e-mail content provider), News (relating to the development and status of the project), and the option to subscribe to Twitter (if you would like to follow the tweets produced by this project).

The simple search box will give results of titles, no matter the language. For example, if you type in architecture, the result list will contain the works in the language of the appropriate subject, not only in Italian or Latin, but English, French, German, and Spanish. Dropdown menus can further refine the user’s search by language, year, and other options. An advanced search is also available. On the “Browse full catalogo” page, access to the bound version of the original catalog is provided through an external link to the Vatican’s website as well as the listing of the catalog for browsing by subject matter according to Cicognara’s categories (for example, “Architettura teatrale antica”). In both the search results page and the browse page, the list of titles includes the Cicognara catalog number, the hyperlinked title of the book, and, if available, an annotation in Italian. If you search using the Chrome browser, the Google translate option appears. The translation can be a hit or a miss but does provide the gist of the annotation.

*Logos of participating Institutions of the Digital Cicognara Library*

In both the search results and the browse page, the titles of the books are hyperlinked to the microfiche version and the actual book held at the Vatican or participating library if available. The digitized versions, whether the microfiche or the books from the participating institutions, are powered by IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), which allows the user to turn the pages and zoom in closer on images or text. One can download the microfiche version in its entirety as a pdf or individual pages from the books of particular libraries. For text, the digitized microfiche version is very readable; for images, the digitized book form will be more desirable. A need to see another version of the same title comes into play most when viewing illustrations. The sidebar for the entries indicate the possible versions available. As an aside, those who are interested in the physical aspect of the book can also examine and zoom in on the binding and endpapers. The expanded cataloging record underneath the viewing platform explains the version that you see, as well as comments on the imperfections and useful information, i.e. lack of digitized pages and others.

Book viewer — *Record result which includes both the microfiche version and the digitized book version.*

Many digitized libraries require memberships or subscriptions; however, the Digital Cicognara Library is an open access source for professional researcher and amateur alike. The fact that this project is supported by many different libraries (The Vatican Library, Getty, Princeton, Harvard, National Gallery of Art, etc.) gives gravitas to its importance in the world of scholarship. Because of the partnership, the Digital Cicognara Library is available through many different venues, which makes it accessible to even more researchers than through a single point of access. The Getty Portal, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive also provide access, as well as the individual libraries that participate in this project. Researchers therefore have numerous options for accessing these titles, among them the richly contextual Digital Cicognara Library website. Scholars not only of art history and architecture, but of the historical time period (16th through 19th centuries) will hopefully be delighted to have these digital resources at their fingertips.

Internet Culturale

June - 2022June - 2022 Alexandra Provo

Reviewed by:
Spyros Koulouris, Cataloging Librarian
Gennadius Library – American School of Classical Studies at Athens
skoulouris.genn@ascsa.edu.gr
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17613/s5sz-qr26

Internet Culturale is a multiyear project that aims to bring together in one platform the digital assets created by Italian repositories. This national network of partners provides access to thousands of materials made available by libraries, archives, and museums. The platform is managed by ICCU – the Italian Central Institute for the Union Catalog, which is part of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Currently 175 repositories across the country share their materials through the aggregator. Collections within the platform are organized by subject and/or medium. These include resources documenting visual arts, music, history, architecture, literature, and the sciences from the 8th to the 20th century in a variety of formats such as books, maps, images, manuscripts, drawings, music scores, and audio visual materials. Collections are displayed as online exhibitions that comprise objects from one or more libraries. A brief introductory text gives some summary information about the content of each exhibit, while users can either browse the collections, search for specific terms, or use the facets. Full-text searching is available for some of the resources.

Italy is notorious for its rich art historical collections that are spread all over the country. One of Internet Culturale’s strengths is that it makes visible the resources owned by small libraries, no matter if they are located in big cities or remote towns. Of additional value is that the records of some other Italian shared catalogs have been exported and are part of the platform. For example, records from SBN (the network of the National Library Services), Manus online (a database of manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages to the 19th century), and EDIT16 (the census of the 16th century Italian editions) are searchable through Internet Culturale. In some cases links to external catalogs are used for digital content that is not hosted in the platform. Among the many interesting collections currently available that users can find are the Autografi Palatini collection of the National Library in Florence (which includes 1200 autographs from significant personalities such as Orazio Rucellai, Benvenuto Cellini, Angelo Poliziano, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Michelangelo), the maps collection of the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, and the Judaica of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma (with more than 180 incunabula and 16th century books). Another key aspect of the catalog is that digital content is provided under a CC BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license. The metadata created by the repositories have a CC0 1.0 universal public domain dedication, making it easy to distribute and reuse information without asking for permission. One potential concern is that the last import was made in 2020. Hopefully, the platform will continue to be updated in the future.

Book viewer in Internet Culturale — Screenshot of the *Internet Culturale* book viewer showing the book *Liber quartus Vribium praecipuarum totius mundi*

Currently, the site is only available in Italian, and therefore users will need to be able to read Italian to use the resource. With some targeted metadata improvements, Internet Culturale has great potential for expanding accessibility to an international audience. This can be done by increasing the use of multi-lingual controlled vocabularies and thesauri. Organizing the metadata in a more structured way would help surmount language-related barriers, supporting access for everyone.

Overall, Internet Culturale has the potential to become the main hub to document and access hidden collections of Italian art and culture. In the post Covid-19 era, small repositories that do not have the staff and resources to manage their digital assets can benefit from it, curate their online collections, and offer them to the broader community. The platform can become a model for national-level catalogs to be used by students, librarians, and researchers in a variety of disciplines: historians, musicologists, art historians, archaeologists, botanists as well as artists in different fields like music, acting, and visual arts.

ThingStor

April - 2022May - 2022 Gabriella Karl-Johnson

Reviewed by:
Anina Rossen, Librarian, and Independent Art Historian
Academy of the Holy Angels
arossen@holyangels.org
https://doi.org/10.17613/w4z4-4a30

ThingStor: A Material Culture Database for Finding Objects in Literature & Visual Art is an open-access resource supported by the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. It was created by Dr. Martin Brückner, together with a multi-departmental group of undergraduate and graduate students at the University. There are currently twenty-four project members, as well as twenty former project members. Thingstor provides a reference database allowing users to access its catalogue of “real” objects, both vernacular and high-style, that appear in American and English literature, as well as in visual art, from the long 19th century. Currently housing more than 1,000 objects, the database is an ongoing project welcoming contributions and input from users of the resource.

ThingStor banner image, which includes four smaller images. From left to right, the first image is a copy of a painting showing three people around a table, one reading a newspaper; the second image shows an antique glass lamp; the third image shows an antique book; the fourth image has a yellow background with white and black text that reads "ThingStor A Material Culture Database for Finding Objects in Literature & Visual Art, Supported by the Canter for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware CMCS" — ThingStor banner image

Using WordPress and Airtable as its platform, Thingstor is an effectively organized and easily navigated resource. The homepage provides six clear headings: access the database, learn more about how to use it, about us, webinar event 2021, and suggest an object. The site is minimally designed, but provides a functional and visually appealing layout, with concise and clear instructions on how to use the database. Under the heading Webinar Event 2021, one can find a video of the event, led by Dr. Brückner, that provides an in depth description of the project and how it came to be. Though mobile-friendly, the gallery view is best experienced on a larger screen.

Once one enters the database on Airtable, one finds a visually engaging resource featuring high quality photos of the objects, at times multiple images, a description of the object, and tagging that links the item to the source text in which it was found. The resource is easily searched and different tabs allow users to access the content by example object, source, or referenced object. The user’s view of the content can also be changed from a gallery view to a grid view, giving the user the option to sort the content to fit their needs. Links are provided in each object record to direct the user to sample object image. Some of these links take the user to additional information while other links are no longer functional.

The image shows an entry in the ThingStor database: a photograph of a decorative silver box with text below it. The text reads "Vinaigrette box. Caption of sample object image: Vinaigrette box, Nathaniel Mills. Source Text: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or, Life among. Quoted Object: Gold vinaigrette." — ThingStor object record, featuring a vinaigrette box.

This online resource is open access and freely available to users without paywall or the need to create an account. The project was initiated by questions from graduate students seeking more information about unfamiliar objects they were coming across in literature and visual arts. This resource is useful to individuals in those fields, but would also be useful to anyone engaging in literature, art, history, theater, or ephemera from that era.

The use of WordPress for the website and Airtable for the database itself is an effective way to organize, store, and share this content. The images are excellent quality, as they are drawn from museum and library digital collections, and allow for close investigation of the object. The resource is highly engaging and invites exploration. Thingstor welcomes interaction from users with Dr. Brückner’s email address available for questions. There is also a Google form for users to suggest an object for the database.

Thingstor is an incredibly useful resource for identifying and accessing information about material objects referenced in 19th century literature and visual art. The database continues to increase its holdings, making itself a valuable repository for researchers and interested lay-people alike.

V&A Explore the Collections

April - 2022May - 2022 Alexandra Provo

Reviewed by:
Matthew Garklavs, Electronic Resources Librarian
Pratt Institute Libraries
mgarklav@pratt.edu
https://doi.org/10.17613/xewy-fa52

The Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London launched Explore the Collections in February 2021. This dynamic new platform was a project two years in the making. It’s an ambitious endeavor that brings together silos of information from the V&A’s collection, online editorial content, holdings from the National Art Library, and the museum archives.

Homepage of the V&A's Explore Our Collections showing a search bar and a section labeled "latest", under which are exhibition titles and images — Homepage of the V&A’s *Explore Our Collections*

Explore Collections was largely driven by user feedback. A usability study published on the V&A website in 2019 explains a lot of their design decisions. From a user experience standpoint, Explore the Collections is very intuitive and easy to navigate. A new user can easily get oriented by simply browsing within the various categories on the landing page. Experts can utilize search tools, facets, and filters that are germane to library research databases.

The landing page is like a museum lobby, prompting you to explore new exhibitions and engage with the permanent collection. For instance, their current exhibit on Beatrix Potter, the renowned English children’s book writer, has a dedicated section rich with resources that was recently featured on the homepage. Users who go down this rabbit hole (pardon the pun) will find highlights from the exhibition and learn more about the artist through interactive materials.

The Beatrix Potter exhibit exemplifies how seamlessly Explore the Collections interoperates with the V&A’s catalog. If you click on the “Search Collections” option below the highlighted materials in this section it generates a catalog query for “Potter, Beatrix”. That button redirects users to an interface where they can explore the collection by performing searches and utilize facets to navigate through results.

Search results page showing a box under the search bar reading "person: Potter, Beatrix", filters, and a results grid — Results after clicking “Search the Collections” on the Beatrix Potter exhibition page.

Explore the Collections is a work in progress. Only half of the V&A’s collection is discoverable in the system as of Spring 2022, so it’s difficult to assess how well it will scale to the items from their library and archives. Based on the limited bibliographic materials accessible now, there are several discrepancies between the metadata available in the National Art Library’s catalog and the new system. For example, one of the resources users can discover in Explore the Collections is William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World. What the user won’t learn in this instance is that there’s a corresponding catalog record for this book in the National Art Library’s OPAC (hosted on Worldcat Discovery). This omission is unfortunate because the OPAC record offers a robust description that is rich with subject headings, local notes about unique physical characteristics of the book, and an external link to a digitized copy that is openly accessible on Internet Archive.

Metadata for the book "The Wood Beyond the World" in the Expore the Collections interface is on the left and images of the book's scanned pages are on the right. — Record for *The Wood Beyond the World* in the *Explore the Collections* interface.

Catalog record showing metadata about the book "The Wood Beyond the World" and a "View eBook" button on the right hand side. — Record for *The Wood Beyond the World* in the *Explore the Collections* interface.

One of the key takeaways from the aforementioned usability study is the importance of making the V&A more transparent with their digital assets. In fact, it specifically mentions the need to share “further relevant information in the archives or the National Library.” Hopefully the designers working on “Explore the Collection” will continue collaborating with their colleagues in the library and archive to ensure that project achieves its vision while fulfilling the needs of stakeholders from the libraries and archives.

Overall, “Explore the Collections” stands out as a promising proof of concept. The project still has a long way to go, but it provides a digital foundation for the V&A can build upon and optimize. For those of us who cannot visit the museum in person, “Explore the Collections” is a viable way to view a collection of valuable resources “that span over 5,000 years of human creativity.”