Library Home » Find Information » Find Databases » Database Tipsheets

ARTstor

Contents & Access | Searching | Display | Citing | Exporting Results | Further Assistance

Contents and Access

What does this database contain?
ARTstor is a digital library of approximately 550,000 images covering primarily art, architecture, and archeology from prehistory to the present day. Images can also be found that are useful for anthropology, history, and cultural studies, among others. Image collections are derived from collaborations with museums, libraries, photographic archives, publishers, slide libraries, and individual scholars. Software tools support viewing and analyzing images through features such as zooming and panning. The database also allows printing and downloading of images for student presentations and papers.

Where do I access this database?
Through the UTSA Library web page (http://www.lib.utsa.edu) under Databases & Article Searching > Databases A - Z.

Available off-campus?
Yes, to UTSA faculty, staff and currently enrolled students. If you are off-campus, once you click on the ARTstor link from the Databases A - Z page you will bring up another page on the UTSA Library web site that will ask for your last name and Banner ID number.

Do I need to register or log on to use ARTstor?
Once you are in ARTstor, you will see a place to "register" or "log on." If all you would like to do in ARTstor is search and view images, you do not have to register. You can also print and download images without registering. However, if you would like to create image groups that you can save in ARTstor, download the Offline Image Viewer to your own computer so you can give presentations using ARTstor images, or if your instructor would like you to access a shared folder for class, you will need to register. Your registration will provide you with remote access to these special features for 120 days. As long as you have logged onto your account within the last 120 days, you will be able to go directly into ARTstor. If you get a message that your 120-day access period has expired, you can reset it by logging onto your account, whether on campus or through the Library's Databases A - Z page.

Full images available online?
Approximately 550,000 images are available to view, print, and download along with detailed image data including title, creator, date, material, repository, subject, style or period, etc.

Language of image descriptions?
English and a few modern languages.

List of image collections and where they came from included in this database?
Yes. From the main ARTstor page click on "About Collections." Click on "More Information" under the name of any collection within ARTstor.

What am I allowed to do with ARTstor?
Since ARTstor offers images gathered from many sources, users should be sensitive to the concerns of the content providers who make these resources available. When you are using ARTstor, you are subject to the Terms and Conditions of Use, which ask you to limit your use of ARTstor images to non-commercial, educational, and scholarly activities. For example, you may download a copy of an ARTstor image to illustrate a research paper or include in a classroom presentation. But, you may not post an ARTstor image on an unrestricted web site that is not password-protected or access-restricted. For further guidance on the Permitted and Prohibited Uses of ARTstor images, please see the ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use: http://www.artstor.org/info/about/terms_conditions.jsp

Searching

Basic searching
You can perform a keyword search from the Welcome Page, the Collection Page or the Thumbnail Page. These keyword searches allow you to search by words or phrases that appear anywhere in the image data (title, creator, subject, etc.) You can search in a specific collection or category of a collection or you can search across all collections.

Enter a search word or phrase in the keyword search box. By default, ARTstor will only return pages that include all of your search words, so there is no need to include "and" between words. Select the collection you wish to search from the drop-down menu or the radio buttons. Click on the "Search" button or press the "Enter" key on your keyboard to begin the search. The results will be returned on the Thumbnail Page.

Advanced Searching
Advanced search is available from the toolbar at the top of the main search page. The Advanced Search window will allow you to search within specific data fields (Creator, Title, Location, Subject, etc.) The Advanced Search also offers boolean logic (AND/OR/NOT) to link words and phrases for more precise queries.

How do I search for an artist?
There is no need to capitalize words in ARTstor, even in artist names. When looking for Claude Monet, you may type: claude monet. Unless your search phrase is in quotation marks, the order of words in your search phrase does not matter. These two search phrases will yield the same results: albrecht durer and durer albrecht.

How do I search for a work of art by its title?
There is no need to capitalize words in ARTstor, even in the title of a work of art. You may use articles, but you do not need to use articles (a, the, le, la, etc.) before titles. To search for an exact phrase, put it in quotes. (Example: "judgment of paris") (Example: "le moulin de la galette")

What major fields are available for searching under Advanced Search?
Creator (artist, creator of a work, if known)
Title (title of a work)
Location (geographic location of the repository, building, or site-specific work)
Repository (location and/or name of the institution housing the work)
Subject (proper names, places, iconography, concepts, themes, or issues)
Material (the substance of which a work is composed)
Style or Period (a defined style, historical period, group, school, dynasty, movement, etc. whose characteristics are represented in the work)
Work Type (identifies the generic type of work being described such as, oil paintings, architectural models, textile, etc.)
Culture (name of the culture, people, or adjectival form of a country name from which a work or image originates or with which the work or image has been associated)
Description (a free-text note about the work)
Technique (the production or manufacturing processes, techniques, and methods incorporated in the fabrication or alteration of the work.)
Number (unique identifiers assigned to a work)

Is there a thesaurus or subject/term list?
No.

How do I limit by Date?
Limit the date from the Advanced Search screen.

Truncation?
An asterisk (*) can represent zero, one or several characters and can be placed anywhere in a word. (Example: brueg*l will match bruegel, brueghel, etc.) (Example: colo*r will find color and colour)
The underscore (_) can represent any one character. (Example: ceramic_ will find ceramic and ceramics)
The dollar sign ($) will expand search results to include items that stem from a word. (Example: $poison will match "poison", "poisoned", "poisoning", "poisonous", and "poisoner", etc.)
The question mark (?) will expand search results to include similarly spelled items. (Example: ?Akhilles will find Achilles)

Can I review my past searches?
You cannot review past searches, but if you have taken advantage of the optional registration, then you can save images into groups and return to view them again (or print, or download) later.

How do I register to a Shared Folder?
If your professor has instructed you to register to an ARTstor Shared Folder, you will need to register for an account on ARTstor's main search page. Once you have logged onto your account, go to the "Tools" toolbar button and select "Access Shared Folder." This will open a Registration Form that prompts you to enter your name and password, which your Instructor should have given to you. Once you have finished filling in the form, click on the "Register" button to confirm your registration. Now you can access that Shared Folder by going to the "View Image Groups" menu on the Welcome Page. Use the first drop-down menu to select the Shared Folder to which you are registered, then use the second drop-down to choose the Image Group that you wish to view.

Display

What are the options for displaying images?
Search results appear on the Thumbnail Page. You may display your search results or Image Group in Thumbnail or List Mode. Toggle between the two by going to View and selecting "Display images in Thumbnail Mode" or "Display images in List Mode." To view the data for an image, click on the caption beneath the thumbnail. This will open the Data Information window. Double click on a thumbnail image for an enlarged view. This will open the Image Viewer window.

What can I do in the Image Viewer window?
The Image Viewer window opens when you double click on an image in ARTstor. You can have up to two Image Viewer windows open simultaneously side by side. Once in the Image Viewer, you can click on the zoom icon and then anywhere on the image to zoom in for details. After zooming in, you can pan across the image by clicking on the pan mode icon and dragging the image. To zoom out, click the zoom out button. If you would like to view the image full-screen, click on the maximize window icon. Display information about the image by clicking on the "i" icon. Icons for printing or downloading the image are also located here.

How can I select images and display only my selections (create an Image Group)?
You must have gone through the optional registration process on the main page in order to use this feature. (See "Do I need to register or log on to use ARTstor?" above.) When you locate an image that you would like to save, single click the thumbnail so that it becomes highlighted in yellow. To de-select an image, simply single click on it once more so that the highlight disappears.

Once you have selected all of the images that you want to save, click on the "Image Groups" toolbar button and choose the option to "Save selected images to a new group." A new window will open, giving you the option to save an Image Group into a personal, private folder, called "My Work Folder," which was automatically created for you when you registered an account. Enter a name for your Image Group in the appropriate field, and click the "Save and Open" button. Your new Image Group will open on the Thumbnail Page. You may drag and drop the thumbnails to rearrange them. You may toggle between List and Thumbnail Mode by going to the View menu in the toolbar and selecting "Display images in thumbnail mode" or "Display images in list mode."

You can continue to add images to this group by conducting more searches and selecting new images. To save these new images to your existing group, highlight the images you want, go to Image Groups in the toolbar, and select "Append selected images to existing group." The appropriate radio button will be preselected so you need only choose which group to save to, and then click "Save."

How do I add personal notes to images?
Registered Users may also add Personal Notes to any image in ARTstor. These notes are private and only you may view them when you log onto your ARTstor account. To add a personal note, double click on the caption beneath the thumbnail image of choice. When you are logged onto your account, you will see an additional tab in the Data Information window marked "Personal Notes." Click on this tab to access a free text field where you may key in any commentary that you wish to attach to an image. Click the "Save" button to preserve your personal notes.

How can I use ARTstor images in a presentation?
There are two ways to do this. Once you download a copy of an ARTstor image and save it locally, you can import that JPEG into a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation just like any other image file. The disadvantage of this is that the JPEG will be low resolution.

Another option is to use ARTstor's own presentation software, the Offline Image Viewer (OIV), which you can download once you complete the optional registration on the ARTstor main page. The Offline Image Viewer allows you to import ARTstor images and save them for later use on any computer that has the Offline Image Viewer installed. The images will all be at a significantly higher resolution, and the Viewer incorporates the zoom and pan features found in the online version of ARTstor. The Viewer allows you to present images from ARTstor along with their image data as an Image Palette Slideshow, or you can use it to create custom slides. Files created using the Offline Image Viewer will be saved in PRS format, which can only be opened using the Offline Image Viewer (they cannot be opened with PowerPoint). PowerPoint slides can also be imported and opened in the Offline Image Viewer. For additional help in using the Offline Image Viewer go to http://www.artstor.org/info/using_artstor/instructional_handouts.jsp and read the guides for OIV 2.5.

Citing

How do I cite ARTstor images?
For information on citing ARTstor images, click on the "Help" button in the ARTstor toolbar. When the Help window opens click on "How do I...?" in the navigation menu on the left. Information on citing will be found under "Using ARTstor images."

Printing, Downloading, E-mailing

How do I print an image?
While in the Image Viewer, you can print out the image that you are currently viewing by clicking on the Print icon, in the bottom right corner of the window. The resulting print-out will contain both the image and its data, as well as a brief copyright statement. The image will print at up to five and a half inches in length on the longest side.

How do I print an Image Group?
Registered users can save an Image Group (see above) and print all of the images in that group. Open the Image Group that you want to print and then select the "Image group print preview" option from the "View" toolbar menu. Choose from three choices for the format of your printout. A print-ready browser window will open, containing a header with the title of your Image Group, followed by thumbnails of the images accompanied by their full (or brief) data records. To print this document, select the "Print" option from your browser's "File" toolbar menu.

Can I e-mail an image to myself?
Yes. When you have an image open in the Image Viewer click on the "Save" icon. You can save an image temporarily to the Library's public computers on the Desktop or in the My Documents folder. Two files will be saved: an HTML file that provides the Image Data, and a JPEG file with the image. Open a new browser window and go to your e-mail provider. Send an e-mail to yourself with the two ARTstor files as attachments.

Help

Where do I go for more help?
In the toolbar near the top of the page click on "Help" for more detailed instructions. Feel free to ask at the Reference Desk or contact us for more assistance: (210)458-4573 (1604 Campus) or 458-2446 (Downtown Campus).

What if I am having trouble getting ARTstor or one of its images to open?
One of the most common problems is being unable to open an image when you double click on a thumbnail. Make sure that any pop-up blockers that you have installed are disabled, or hold down your "Ctrl" key while clicking on the image.