Art & Art History

ARTstor Database (from the entry page, select ENTER Artstor Digital Library, which is near, but not at, the upper right side) with over two million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. See ARTstor Policies at CSU for more information on access. See ARTstor for information about the database.

“ARTstor is a nonprofit digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences with a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Our community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates.”

There are terms and conditions for the use of ARTstor images and files. Make sure that you read through them before saving or printing an image for the first time and as a reminder every now and then after that. (See more below.)

CSU affiliates may access ARTstor via “A-Z Databases”

The database, while of primary interest to those in Art, supports research needs of faculty and students in many departments. Specific collections of interest include by department:

• Anthropology: Anthropology
• Design & Merchandising: Design & Decorative Studies
• English: Literary Studies
• Ethnic Studies: African-American Studies, Asian Studies, Native American Studies, and Women’s Studies
• Foreign Language & Literature: Foreign Language & Literature
• History and English: Classical Studies
• History: Ethnic Studies collections (listed above), American Studies, History, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Renaissance Studies
• Horticulture and Landscape Architecture: Architecture & Architectural History
• Journalism: Photography
• Music: Music History.
• Philosophy & Religion: Religious Studies
• School of Arts: Theater & Dance

See ARTstor's Subject Guides for topical suggestions.

Users may browse by:

• Geography
• Classification
• Collection (i.e., ARTstor, Institutional, Personal...)
• Sample Topic (with 100 images per topic displayed)

Overview of searching and using ARTstor.

Demonstrations & Training (offered by Art Librarian Naomi Lederer) for this database cover:

• Registering for ARTstor
• Searching ARTstor
• Images: information, size changes, saving to image group, what the icons do, etc.
• Menus
• Sorting and saving images
• Exporting to PowerPoint 2007
• Exporting to EndNote
• Emailing citations
• Adding personal notes to images
• Unlocking password-protected folders
• The different access levels to ARTstor (see ARTstor Policies at CSU for related information)
• If audience is faculty with instructor access, instructor tools (sharing, uploading, etc.)

Help with ARTstor

There is a help page with system requirements for using ARTstor.

See also:

• ARTstor Digital Library FAQs
• ARTstor Help Topics

ARTstor User Services can be reached by phone 9am-6pm EST Monday-Friday. Call 888-278-0079 or 212-500-2400.

Terms & Conditions

There are terms and conditions for the use of ARTstor images and files. Of particular interest are 4 Permitted Uses of the Content and 5  Prohibited Uses of the Content. Read through all of the terms and conditions for additional information.

There are terms and conditions for the use of ARTstor images and files. Make sure that you read through them before saving or printing an image for the first time and as a reminder every now and then after that.

There are three levels of access to ARTstor:

• Community
• Registered
• Instructor

Community Users 
ARTstor allows anyone on a CSU computer to access the database. Users may search for images, download (save), and print.

Registered Users
CSU students, faculty, and staff may register for an ARTstor account. This account is accessible remotely for 120 days only; users must access the ARTstor database via a CSU computer or via the CSU library login (proxy) before the 120 days is up in order to keep this remote access. The images and notes are saved in the account (see below), and will remain available once the user logs in through a computer on campus or the proxy again.

Registered users may:

• search for images, download (save), and print
• create image groups
• share images and image groups via URLs with other ARTstor users
• download PowerPoint presentations with images and information automatically attached to them
• add personal notes to individual images (seen only by the specific user)

Instructors
Permission for instructor-level access is granted at CSU via your department chair. Permission is granted to faculty members, graduate teaching assistants and other graduate students who are identified by their department chair as having a need, and only those undergraduate students for whom it is deemed necessary (a very small number). In all cases the request for instructor access must come through a department chair. Access is granted at the beginning of each semester or term (fall, spring, summer). Before access can be granted, users must first register with ARTstor. Then, once registered, users may ask their department chair for access. Chairs are to gather a list of names of those who need instructor access and send them as a list, including the e-mail address they used to register, clearly indicating that these people have their permission to the Institutional Contact, , at the designated times of the year (a floating 2-3 week period). During the first year, there will be some flexibility as to the time of year faculty members may receive instructor access, but they still must go through their chair and chairs are requested to send a list, not one person at a time. Beginning in July 2011, the access granting will be rigidly adhered to at the beginning of the semester (again, within a short floating time period).

Note: ARTstor has multiple places where promotion of instructor access is made (that, for some reason, cannot be removed)--however, anyone who sends a note directly to the Institutional Contact will be informed that he/she needs to contact his/her departmental chair to request access. In the meantime, a registered user may do many things that remain as part of the registered user's account, so any preparations (e.g., creation of image groups, etc.) made before instructor access is granted will be available after the status change.

Those with instructor access may :

• do everything a registered user can do
• upload images and sound files (up to 1000 MB total) into ARTstor (instructors should be aware of possible copyright restrictions; images one has taken oneself are the safest)
• share groups of images (to registered users with a password or to all members of the CSU community)
• share own images
• allow registered users with a password to add to image groups
• add instructor notes to images; these are viewable by others

Reminder of terms and conditions for the use of ARTstor images.