NetNews

A summer research project by Stanzi McGlynn '10, of Montoursville, PA, will result in a database of digital images of West African textiles to be used by both the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and the Owen D. Young Library.

McGlynn, an economics and fine arts major, was awarded a special research fellowship for the project, titled "From Weave to Web: Creating an Online Digital Collection of West African Textiles." She will conduct research on a collection of over 70 textiles from West Africa given to the University by Christopher '70 and Nora Leonard Roy '69.

As part of the project, photographer Matt Bogosian '02 visited campus to create digital images of the textiles. Roy, a professor of art history and the Elizabeth M. Stanley Faculty Fellow of African Art History at the University of Iowa, also came to campus, for recorded interviews describing the textiles. The recordings, also digital, will accompany the images as part of the project, one of three pilot programs that the gallery is launching in digital archiving, according to Brush Gallery Director Cathy Tedford. The plan calls for the library to incorporate the collection into its new federated search engine, "Encore."

Others involved in the collaborative project are Dana Professor of Fine Arts Obiora Uduchukwu; Carole Mathey, assistant director of the Brush Gallery; Arline Wolfe, arts metadata technician; and the gallery's student assistants. In addition, Newell Center for Arts Technology Director Christopher Watts and Technical Support Specialist Greogry Matejcik have supported the project.

More: Christopher Roy's Web site

Matt Bogosian's Web site

Posted: June 18, 2008