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Our rating scale for images ranges from one star for ‘unusable’ to three stars for “usable” to five stars for ‘very good’. You can use the star rating system to evaluate the quality of the images. Criteria include resolution, colour fidelity, image cropping and alignment, and moiré effects. These ratings automatically influence the ranking when displaying the relevant search results.
With the image viewer at the second magnification level of the images, the respective image can be enlarged and reduced again continuously. The higher the zoom level, the smaller the visible area, but the more detailed the display and thus perfect for evaluating the image.
Many of you have personal access to prometheus, which allows you to create image collections, rate and comment on images, select favourites, and upload your own images to your personal image database. This access is time-limited and is managed by your institution’s administration. Four weeks before it expires, you will receive a notification by email and, if you wish, you can apply to your contact person for an extension.
For several months now, we have been offering three different ways to access the image archive.
1. If you are using your PC within a network of the currently 173 licensed institutions, you can use the campus access.
2. Many of you have personal access with a login name or email address and password, in which case you can log in directly.
3. Some of the licensed institutions now also offer eduGAIN access.
We have compiled further information for you in a blog post and in the help section.
We offer two different search options: simple search and advanced search.
We are rapidly approaching the milestone of 4 million images. This time, we have integrated five of the 17 museum databases of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC:
(1) The “Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery” houses exceptional collections of Asian art. A total of 4,720 records have been integrated into prometheus.
(2) The “National Museum of African Art” is dedicated to the collection, exhibition, conservation, and study of African art. It contains 111 records.
(3) The “National Museum of the American Indian” is dedicated to promoting knowledge and understanding of the lives, languages, literature, history, and art of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. There are 180 records available for your research.
(4) The “National Portrait Gallery” focuses on portraits of American artists, politicians, scientists, and other individuals who have contributed to the history, development, and culture of the country. It contains 15,445 records.
(5) The “Smithsonian American Art Museum” has a wide range of American art from all regions and art movements in the United States. 13,626 records are available in prometheus.
At prometheus, you can search via a single interface, which displays your search results from all 135 image databases currently integrated.
The year is drawing to a close and the Christmas countdown has begun. Starting on Monday, 24 doors will open again in this year’s Advent calendar – here on the blog, on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. This time, the numbers are linked to insights into the image archive, and we hope that there will be interesting, useful and inspiring facts for everyone.
New to prometheus is an image database from Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle with 3,296 records. The archive holds a unique collection of images documenting the history of BURG, its artistic works, people, and events. It includes black-and-white negatives by former university photographer Karl August Harnisch, which he produced on behalf of BURG between 1959 and 1997, mainly on 9 × 12 cm glass plates. These document the artistic and creative work produced at BURG and provide an insight into the development of art and design in the GDR. The glass plates were digitized in one project and entered into the archive database with the corresponding metadata.
In recent years, we have made the prometheus app available for mobile use of the image archive. Since the activation of our new frontend in responsive web design, however, it is retired, because you can now also use the image archive in the browser on your mobile devices without any problems.
Have you already tried it?
When viewing an image at the second zoom level, the new “Image Viewer” is now available to you.
The Image Viewer allows you to continuously zoom in and out on the image. The higher the zoom level, the smaller the visible area, but the more detailed the display, making it perfect for evaluating the image. You can assign stars directly, from 1 for “unusable” to 5 for “very good.” Clicking on the two small arrows on the right-hand side sets the zoom to 0, and the arrow (up) on the left-hand side takes you back to the first magnification level of the image with all metadata.
