e-Books & Digital Images for Teaching & Research
EBRARY
For decades, researchers have had access to an ever-growing body of digitized periodical literature (newspapers, magazines, and journals) and reference works. Articles in these publications generally have one thing in common: they are short. Rarely does one read a reference work or a complete journal volume cover-to-cover; rather, readers select those portions that pertain to the research question at hand. The traditional book, by contrast, typically is read cover-to-cover, which might account for its relatively late appearance in the digital world.
Librarians see in the electronic book (which is generally distributed online) an opportunity to solve some of the challenges facing the modern library—particularly, physical space constraints and the need for multiple copies of certain titles. The electronic book, or "e-book," obviously has the benefit of requiring no shelf space, but, perhaps more importantly, numerous readers can simultaneously "check out" an e-book.
To facilitate an expansion of the NYU Libraries' electronic text collection, we recently introduced ebrary, an interactive, keyword-searchable collection of books that cover all academic subjects. ebrary includes over 30,000 titles from more than 200 of the world's leading publishers. Individual titles are included in BobCat, the Library's online catalog.
ebrary offers more than simply digital versions of traditional books. Using this dynamic system, researchers can create a personal bookshelf, highlight text, add bookmarks, and easily perform other advanced functions. In addition, ebrary's highly innovative InfoTools allow the researcher to select individual terms and define, explain, or translate them, among other options. Faculty members can even create links to selected chapters in NYU Blackboard (see inset). A link to the entire ebrary collection can be found on the Library's website (http://library.nyu.edu) by selecting "ejournals & etexts" from the "Find" section, then choosing "ebrary" from the list of "Searchable Collections."
Faculty: Create Links to ebrary Titles in NYU Blackboard
- Look up the desired book in BobCat (www.bobcat.nyu.edu/), and click the ebrary link at the bottom of
the record (below the call number). If you prefer, you can also search for the book directly in ebrary:
https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://site.
ebrary.com/lib/nyulibrary.
- If prompted, click the link to download the ebrary reader (a simple plugin for your web browser).
- Place your cursor on the first page of a chapter that you are interested in and right click your mouse (or,
on a Macintosh, hold down the option key and click). From the menu that opens, select "Copy Bookmark."
(The link to the page will be copied as a hyperlink ready for pasting.)
- Paste the hyperlink into NYU Blackboard (or any document).
- Add the prefix https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url= to the beginning of the hyperlink, as shown,in the example, below. This prefix is necessary for students to be able to access the book site from off campus
(NetID and password login will be required).
- For more information, contact Gloria Rohmann at 212-998-2534.
Example
"Questions of Style and Authentication" in Hemingway, Sean A., Horse and Jockey from Artemision: A Bronze Equestrian Monument of the Hellenistic Period. Ewing, NJ, U.S.A: University of California Press, 2004. p. 83. https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?
url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nyulibrary/Doc?id=10068572&ppg=110.
DIGITAL IMAGES FOR TEACHING & RESEARCH
While ebrary serves the need for convenient access to e-books, there is also a growing demand at NYU for convenient access to digital image collections. The need for images of works of art, buildings, monuments, and the like was once restricted to art departments, but today it is not uncommon for faculty and students across the curriculum to incorporate images into their teaching and research.
To serve the image needs of the entire University, the Library maintains a subscription to ARTstor—an online image database comprised of hundreds of thousands of images, accompanied by descriptive metadata (e.g., artist information, creation date, materials, and so on).
source can be expected to satisfy everyone's visual imagery needs, the Library has recently entered into an agreement with ARTstor to host the University's local collections. A recent addition is the entire Saskia archive, comprised of very high quality images of two and three dimensional works of art and the "built environment."1 ARTstor provides access to a very large—and growing—collection of visual images through a powerful interface and the Offline Image Viewer.
Many researchers have personal collections of digital imagery. ARTstor has initiated a "personal collections" feature that provides registered individuals with 1000 MB of space for their own digital collections.
To find out more about ARTstor and the NYU Digital Image Collection, browse the ARTstor website at http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=www.artstor.org (also accessible via the Libraries website in the Articles Via Databases section: http://library.nyu.edu/collections/find_articles_title.html).
Anyone with an active NYU NetID and password may become a registered ARTstor user. Faculty who wish to request instructor privileges should contact Tom McNulty at tom.mcnulty@nyu.edu or 212-998-2519.
[Please see also Greg Schnese's related article on managing digital images with Luna Insight, a suite of tools available University-wide.]
Footnote
- The phrase "built environment" refers to architecture, landscapes, and other surroundings that are created by hum
Author Biography
Tom McNulty is the Librarian for Fine Arts at NYU's Bobst Library.
|
