ARTstor to Use Nexaweb Software to Enhance Its Digital Arts Library
Thousands of Non-Profits to be Able to Actively Use Art Images Via Digital Technology
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 15, 2004--Nexaweb, the leading provider of Enterprise Internet Application solutions, today announced ARTstor, a non-profit organization dedicated to using digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields, will use a combination of Nexaweb and ARTstor software to deploy its new Digital Library. The ARTstor Digital Library is comprised of hundreds of thousands of digital images and related data and software tools to make active use of those images. The Digital Library is available only to United States-based non-profit institutions for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes, with international availability in the near future.
Using Nexaweb, ARTstor will provide a range of key features to Digital Library users. The Nexaweb-enabled ARTstor tools will allow faculty to teach using digital images and students to view and analyze images related to a course. The tools also make it possible to create and share personalized image groups for study, research and collaboration in the arts, such as curators who are planning an exhibition.
"We looked at many rich Internet application solutions and chose Nexaweb because it offered us a way to make ARTstor accessible to a wide variety of users without compromising functionality," said James Shulman, Executive Director of ARTstor. "Working with images in research or teaching requires active use of those images--and users need a fairly sophisticated workspace that will allow them to create a group of images and edit or share these groups. Nexaweb offered the required application richness, flexibility and scalability to best serve our users' needs."
Specifically, Nexaweb's software platform will allow ARTstor to deploy its Digital Library to a large base of users with widely varying Internet connections (dialup, ISDN, Broadband and Satellite) and Web browsers without any compromise in user experience. Using Nexaweb, ARTstor will also offer personalized tools by providing 'drag-and-drop' functionality that allows users to save images in individual image groups and later return to them.
The Digital Library's Charter Collection will be made available to non-profit institutions starting in July 2004, with approximately 300,000 images covering artistic traditions across many times and cultures, including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts and design as well as many other forms of visual culture. The Charter Collection is expected to reach half a million images by 2006.
"We are very pleased to be working with ARTstor," said Larry Geisel, Nexaweb CEO. "The ARTstor Digital Library requires a variety of rich Internet application capabilities and showcases Nexaweb's unique functionality. We are delighted to be associated with such an esteemed project dedicated to making the arts more accessible to cultural and educational communities."
To date, over thirty-five test institutions have had access to the software and image repository during the past academic year, including: Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard University, Hunter College, James Madison University, Johns Hopkins University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, New York University, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Smith College, University of California at San Diego, Williams College and the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. The ARTstor Digital Library will be more generally available to non-profit educational and cultural institutions in the United States starting in July 2004.
About Nexaweb
Based in Cambridge, MA, Nexaweb Technologies, Inc. (www.nexaweb.com) provides the leading software platform for building and deploying Enterprise Internet Applications. Nexaweb customers enjoy more efficient business operations, faster time to market and competitive advantage. Nexaweb-powered applications offer the scalability and deployment efficiencies of the Internet while delivering the functionality and power of enterprise applications. With Nexaweb, businesses can deploy mission critical applications via the Internet without compromise.
About ARTstor
ARTstor is a non-profit organization created by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As part of its ongoing effort to build a community resource, ARTstor is developing a Digital Library that will offer a broad range of images and related descriptive information and the software tools to enable active use of the images. The Digital Library's initial content will include approximately 300,000 images covering artistic traditions across many times and cultures, including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, as well as many other forms of visual culture. ARTstor's initial software tools will support a wide range of pedagogical and research uses including: viewing and analyzing images through features such as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared uses, and creating and delivering presentations both online and offline. This ARTstor Digital Library will be made available solely for educational and scholarly uses that are noncommercial in nature. More information on ARTstor is available at www.artstor.org.
Contacts
Citigate Cunningham
Scott Malinowski, 617-374-4223
smalinowski@citigatecunningham.com
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