Getty Grant Program Funding Helps Launch "ELI," Yale's Electronic Library Initiatives Program

Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska announced the first phase of the Electronic Library Initiatives (ELI) program-a focused effort to facilitate and study the use of digital images and other materials in teaching, learning and scholarship.

Yale University faculty and library staff have been working together over the past three years to explore the potential for the use of digital images in the classroom; these collaborative efforts are now maturing into the ELI program. Under the broad umbrella of the ELI program and utilizing existing and emerging technologies, the library will build targeted, curriculum-based collections of digitized material including text and images in support of teaching, learning and research at Yale.

Initial support for the project was provided by a $250,000 grant from the Getty Grant Program awarded in 2000. The Getty grant will facilitate the design of study tools, help expand collections of digitized images to support American studies, and assess the impact of these new materials on teaching and learning. Yale expects to use the results of this assessment to tailor and improve the pilot project over its three-year life, sharing the results with other institutions with similar goals.

This first phase of ELI will capitalize on the Yale University Library’s experience in implementing digital study tools using the Luna Imaging, Inc.’s Insight(r) software. During the Fall 2001 semester, 12 Yale faculty members-largely from the History of Art Department-used the digital image library for both classroom teaching and course reserves with great success. Prochaska expects this project will ultimately provide Internet access to over 100,000 digital images, converting slides currently held in the Art Library’s Visual Resources Collection, scanning manuscripts from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and linking to images of original artifacts housed in the University’s distinguished museums.

“In addition to increasing the ease of access to the University’s rich library and museum resources,” Prochaska notes,”this initiative will be a major test bed for understanding the impact of an integrated digital library on academic activities. I am enormously grateful for the extraordinary support from the Getty Grant Program. They are leaders in the visual art world and this grant is just the latest evidence of the Getty’s foresight and active involvement in making the arts more accessible.”

“We are pleased to provide support for this important resource that will enable faculty to teach the history of American art from objects in American collections,” noted Joan Weinstein, Associate Director of the Getty Grant Program. “Our support is part of the Getty’s larger commitment to new models of teaching and learning in the visual arts.”

A highly valued partner in teaching and research at Yale, the University Library has more than 10.5 million volumes housed in more than 20 libraries including the Yale Arts Library. A full spectrum of library resources, from rare books and manuscripts to a rapidly expanding network of electronic resources, constitutes one of Yale’s distinctive strengths. Incorporating the collections in Art, Architecture, Arts of the Book, Classics, Drama and Visual Resources, the Arts Library supports several distinguished programs, including the Schools of Architecture, Art and Drama and the Department of the History of Art and serves faculty, students, researchers and staff throughout the Yale community, including those at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art and visitors from the Southern Connecticut region and beyond. The Library has a long and valued relationship with Yale’s Information Technology Services (ITS)-another campus resource that explores innovative uses of technology to advance teaching and learning.

The Getty Grant Program is part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The Grant Program provides critical support to institutions and individuals throughout the world in fields that are aligned most closely with the Trust’s strategic priorities. It therefore funds a diverse range of projects that promote learning and scholarship about the history of the visual arts and the conservation of cultural heritage, and it consistently searches for collaborative efforts that set high standards and make significant contributions. Since its inception in 1984, the Grant Program has supported over 2,500 projects in more than 150 countries.

Information about the ELI project is available at http://www.library.yale.edu/eli/.