Contacts:
Gloria Gottschalk, New School University
212-229-5667, ext. 239
[email protected]
Jennifer Zabriskie, Luna Imaging, Inc.
310.274.8787, ext. 121
[email protected]
PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN OF NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY
AND LUNA IMAGING ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP
LUNA INSIGHT® SOFTWARE TO PROVIDE INNOVATIVE DIGITAL
IMAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR ONLINE IMAGE COLLECTION
(New York, NY – October 1, 2001) Parsons School of Design
of New School University and Luna Imaging, Inc., announced today the installation
of Luna Imaging’s Insight® server enabling online access to major visual
collections at Parsons School of Design’s Adam & Sophie Gimbel Library
Slide Collection. The Gimbel Library and Luna will create an extensive digital
image database over the next two years.
With the introduction of Insight at New School University as the
fall 2001 term begins, "smart classrooms" on campus are becoming even
more dynamic. Any New School instructor teaching in a "smart classroom"
outfitted with a computer and digital projector can now use the New School Image
Library to access and work with images in the school’s growing high-resolution
digital image archives of art and architecture.
"Luna’s Insight image database will now provide an invaluable
resource to students and faculty not only at Parsons School of Design, and over
time to all the divisions of New School University," remarked New School
University President and former Senator Bob Kerrey. "Having high quality
and easily accessible online images of major artwork will enrich the education
of our students."
Parsons School of Design, one of the largest degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation, will begin using Luna’s Insight software this fall 2001 semester in its Liberal Studies and Foundations programs, specifically its course on "Perspectives in World Art." It will also be used in its Integrated Design Curriculum program. Traditionally, slides, handouts and references in books are used in these courses to expose students to the works of art.
New School University joins other prominent institutions, such as Yale University,
Cornell University and Smith College, which are using Luna’s Insight software
to manage and use their digital resources for teaching and research. Through
Insight, users can dynamically view and work with visual materials online. Instructors
can prepare image lectures virtually anywhere and display Insight presentations
in the classroom with digital projectors or monitors. Presentations can be as
simple as choosing and sequencing full screen images—or they can incorporate
several images at once to show details and side-by-side comparisons.
Parsons chose Insight to provide the complete visual environment for working
online with more than 2,000 digital files from its collection of over 95,000
slides held at the Adam & Sophie Gimbel Library at Parsons. The Gimbel Library
is an art and design resource supporting the art, architecture and design programs
offered by Parsons School of Design. Its collections cover all facets of design,
including communications, design, product design, fashion design, digital design,
as well as fine and decorative arts. The Library’s collections contain
more than 195,000 books, periodicals, slides, pictures and videos. The Kellen
Archives of Parsons School of Design is also housed in the library. Archival
holdings include materials pertaining to the history of the school and original
artwork, designs and illustrations of Parsons graduates and faculty are available
for study and research.
In addition to the Kellen Archives in the Parsons library, New School University’s
Art Collection and other University archives will be digitized and added to
the visual resources available for teaching and research using Insight.
"We are especially pleased to make Insight available at Parsons, a leading
school of art and design contending with inherent diversity of media and artistic
expression," says Michael Ester, President and founder of Luna Imaging.
"Insight offers Parsons the opportunity to draw on visual resources from
its own rich holdings together with major external collections now accessible
online."
Because Insight is quickly becoming the primary software platform for accessing
high-resolution image collections, New School University has the opportunity
to expand its digital resources by purchasing digital images and subscribing
to other collections. Earlier this year, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced
it is adopting Luna's Insight software as the platform to distribute ArtSTOR,
a new independent, not-for-profit organization that will make additional digital
resources for the study of art, architecture and other fields in the humanities
available for subscription. Later this year, Insight will also enable online
access to The AMICO Library™ available by subscription through RLG (the
Research Library Group). The AMICO Library is an online repository of art from
the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) containing multimedia documentation
of works in leading museums.
New School University will also have the opportunity to develop cooperative agreements with other institutions to share collections. Luna’s Insight software makes gaining access to physically distributed databases and image resources as easy as a handshake and entering the institution name in Insight as a new authorized user of the collection. The powerful cross collection searching engine in Insight also resolves any differences between metadata standards so that collections can be viewed and searched as one cohesive body of content.
****
Luna Imaging, Inc., is based in Culver City, CA. Luna Imaging (www.lunaimaging.com) enables museums, libraries and archives to build and distribute high-quality visual collections in digital form and provides sophisticated software to access and use image collections over the Internet.
Parsons School of Design, a division of New
School University, is one of the largest degree-granting colleges of art
and design in the nation. Currently enrolled are about 2,400 undergraduate students,
380 graduate students, and 2,500 non-degree students from all 50 of the United
States and from 60 countries. Parsons’ main campuses are located in New
York City’s Greenwich Village and Midtown Manhattan. In addition, Parsons
has affiliate schools in Paris, France; Kanazawa, Japan; Seoul, South Korea;
and the Dominican Republic. Undergraduate degrees are offered in Architectural
Design, Communication Design, Design and Management, Fashion Design, Fine Arts,
Illustration, Integrated Design Curriculum, Interior Design, Photography, and
Product Design. Graduate degrees are granted in Architecture, Design and Technology,
Lighting Design, Painting, Sculpture, and the History of Decorative Arts. For
further information on Parsons, call 212/229-8910 or go to the Web site at www.parsons.edu.
New School University, with 7,000 matriculated students
and 25,000 continuing education students, is comprised of seven academic divisions:
The New School, the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, Parsons
School of Design, Eugene Lang College, Mannes College of Music, the Robert J.
Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, and the Actors Studio
Drama School, as well as the University's B.F.A. in Jazz and Contemporary Music.
New School Online University offers one of the largest selections of online
courses in the nation. For further information about admission to New School
University, call 877-528-3321 or go to the Web site at www.newschool.edu