Work in Progress at the Ancient World Image Bank — Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

"Many members of the ISAW community are aware of our Ancient World Image Bank (AWIB) project. It began in 2009 — and continues today — as a collaborative effort to collect and share free, open-access images of archaeological sites, landscapes, and artifacts. This academic year we are working on two new initiatives that will enrich AWIB's content and improve access to it ... Among the treasures of the ISAW library are over 2,000 volumes that constitute The Collection of Emily and Cornelius Vermeule. The generous gift of Cornelius Vermeule to the Institute, this collection includes a number of rare editions of works on classical archaeology and philology, as well as many difficult-to-find books acquired on research trips abroad by the collectors. In addition to the books, the gift included pamphlets, offprints, and 43 metal boxes containing 35mm slides, most of which appear to have been original creations, rather than purchased sets. We estimate the total number of slides at around 3,200. Most of these boxes appear to have been organized for lectures, and are accompanied by varying degrees of documentation ... We are also retooling the technology that underpins AWIB in order to: improve our ability to publish images to the ISAW Photostream on the Flickr.com photo-sharing website, establish a purpose-built website for all AWIB imagery, and automate the deposit of all our content in the NYU Faculty Digital Archive (FDA) ..."