A digital library and network for electronic teaching and learning materials for the Australian University system

Abstract

ArtServe (http://rubens.anu.edu. all) went live on 4th January 1994, and currently gets about 2,800 accesses per day from all over the world. The material on offer consists of: (a) the Diocletian tutorial mentioned above; (b) 2,800 images of "Prints & Print History", together with their associated data files, available both with inline thumbnail images and via a fill-in-the-form database-query interface. The images date from the beginning of printmaking to about 1900, so as to avoid copyright problems; (c) 2,600 images of "Architecture of the Mediterranean Basin", currently available only via a fill-in-the-forms database-query interface; (d) a TextSearcher, commissioned by the author, which operates with plain ASCII text files and also with HTML files (see 6.2.2); (e) a 120,000-word book, written by the author, on "The Greek and Roman Cities of Western Turkey", "sliced up" into HTML format; (f) a further collection of images of Mediterranean art & architecture. Most images are accessible via a forms query interface, with the option of returning hotspotted records (i.e. for those with slow network connections) or records with inline GIFs as well.