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In 1862, amateur photographer William H. Mumler of Boston took a self-portrait in his studio, unaware of a ghostly apparition lurking directly behind him. It wasn’t until he viewed the resulting image of a pellucid arm draped casually across his shoulder that he realized the camera must have exposed the lingering spirit of his deceased […]

The Christian festival of Michaelmas, also known as the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, is celebrated in many parts of the world on September 29. Michaelmas celebrates the story of Saint Michael defeating Satan, which is often depicted in the motif of Saint George and the Dragon, Saint George being the Archangel Michael’s earthly counterpart. The earliest […]

An interview with the graduate student curators of Avery/GSAPP Architectural Plans and Sections To celebrate the completion of our two-year collaborative project with Avery Library and GSAPP on releasing a collection of 20,000 architectural plans, sections, and related materials in Artstor, Lisa Gavell, Artstor’s Senior Manager of Metadata & Content, spoke with five of the […]

Editor’s note: this post has been updated to reflect Artstor’s platform changes. We invited Stanton Belford, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Martin Methodist College, to tell us about his three Marine Biology collections in JSTOR Forum (formerly Shared Shelf): Red Sea, Trinidad, and Key Largo. Before describing the marine biology digital collections, I would […]

Start off the school year with more than 2 million images! Here are some links to help you get started: * Register for a free Artstor account – you’ll be able to download images, log in away from campus, share image groups, and more! * Learn how easy it is to download citations! Export to your favorite reference citation management […]

In 1846, dentist William T. G. Morton assembled a group of doctors in the operating theater at Massachusetts General Hospital, a sky-lit dome located on the hospital’s top floor. As the doctors watched from the dome’s stadium seating, Morton waved a sponge soaked in a mysterious substance called Letheon inches from his patient’s face. The […]

Editor’s note: this post was updated to include accurate information about Artstor’s platform changes in June 2018. Traci Timmons, Librarian at the Seattle Art Museum, shares with us the story of the completion of their first digital collection. The Seattle Art Museum only began issuing its annual reports digitally in 2007. Prior to that, for […]

It’s very easy to share links to images and image groups in the Artstor Digital Library. Here’s how: Open the group you wish to share. This can be a Private, Institutional, Artstor-Curated, or a group that has been shared with you. From the menu choose Share > Generate image group link. Click Copy to Clipboard […]

Professor David S. Efurd’s collection of nearly 10,000 photographs of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain art and architecture was recently released in Artstor. We were particularly impressed by the variety and complexity of the rock-cut cave temples he photographed, and he was kind enough to answer our questions. Artstor: What is the importance of caves as the sites of some […]

Sculptor Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for two things: his bombastic autobiography, the Vita, in which he confesses to multiple murders and a spectacular jailbreak, and for his salt cellar. Yes, that’s right—a dish for salt.