Blog Category: Public collections

Happy Earth Day! We’ve gathered 26 open collections on JSTOR that feature breathtaking documentation of our planet and its creatures by scientists, scholars, and artists across many eras, all free for everyone to enjoy.

Jill Pflugheber and Dr. Steven White, Desfontainia spinosa, 2019. From the Microcosms: Sacred Plants of the Americas collection.

Microcosms: Sacred Plants of the Americas
Confocal microscopy is a specialized optical imaging technique that provides contact-free, non-destructive measurements of three-dimensional shapes. This collection—at the juncture of art, technology, and science—features plants considered sacred by indigenous groups of the Americas.

To celebrate this year’s Earth Day, we’re sharing five openly accessible collections on JSTOR that feature the work of  important women botanists and botanical artists.

You might wonder, considering how difficult it was for women to be allowed into the sciences, how did these women achieve so much? As Matthew Willis writes in JSTOR Daily, botany started to become an acceptable focus of scientific study for upper-class women in Europe by the later part of the 1700s. He quotes the English writer Maria Edgeworth, who declared in 1810 that “Many things, which were thought to be above their comprehension, or unsuited to their sex, have now been found to be perfectly within the compass of their abilities, and peculiarly suited to their situation. Botany had become fashionable; in time it may become useful, if it be not so already.” Despite the condescension behind the opportunity, opening this door to women was a boon to science, and we are glad to be able to share their contributions with everyone.

Margaret R Dickinson. Watercolor drawing of Oyster Plant Lithospermum maritinum, now known as Oyster Plant Mertensia maritima. Not dated. From the Margaret Rebecca Dickinson Collection of Watercolors.

Minna R. Fernald, Watercolor of Cherokee Bean (Erythrina Herbacea), 1930. From the Minna R. Fernald Collection of Paintings of Florida Wildflowers.

Happy Black History Month! A year ago we shared a selection of image and primary source collections on Artstor and JSTOR that focused on Black history. Today, we have more than 20 community-contributed collections to add to that list—all free to access and download on JSTOR.

Cover of Black Dialogue, 07-01-1970, from Reveal Digital’s Independent Voices collection

Black American Independent Voices (Reveal Digital)
Independent Voices provides scholars unprecedented access to writings and thoughts of those who led and participated in movements such as Black Power, the Black Arts Movement, Black Nationalism, Separatism, and Black Feminism.

Black Perspective (Lehman College, CUNY Leonard Lief Library)
A student-initiated cultural publication, Black Perspective was published from April 1972 to October 1974, and its 20 issues focused on the perceived needs and concerns of Black people at Lehman College and in society at large.

Artstor and JSTOR offer more than a million freely accessible images and other materials from library special collections, faculty research, and institutional history materials. The collections are constantly growing, and as we browsed for Latin American content in preparation for Hispanic Heritage Month, we were delighted by what we found. Here are some notable highlights:

Anthony Stevens Acevedo. Ruins of the Church and Convent building complex of San Francisco. 2011. CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, First Blacks in the Americas collection.

Leslie Jiménez. All for All. 2012. CCNY CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Condition - My Place Our Longing / Condición: Mi Lugar Nuestro Anhelo collection. CUNY Dominican Studies Institute.

Doris Rodriguez. Les Delices des Quatre Saisons I. 2011. CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Dominican Artists in the United States.

City College Dominican Library First Blacks in the Americas

A history project devoted to disseminating research and rigorous information about the earliest people of Black African descent that arrived, resided, and stayed in the Americas from 1492 onwards, and whose continued presence in the New World ever since is clearly shown on historical records.

City College: Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II

A pioneering exhibit about courage, valor, and commitment consisting of 12 panels in which photographs, documents, correspondence, newspaper articles, and short biographies tell the stories of Dominicans that served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.

CCNY CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Condition – My Place Our Longing / Condición: Mi Lugar Nuestro Anhelo

The art exhibit Condition: My Place Our Longing / Condición: Mi Lugar Nuestro Anhelo highlights the work of Dominican artists Leslie Jiménez and Julianny Ariza. It showcases original pieces produced between 2011 and 2012 that explore the subject of living in between, in two worlds, and other conditions of living.

CCNY CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Dominican Artists in the United States – Doris Rodríguez

This collection focuses on the artist Doris Rodríguez, an artist and award-winning author and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the US and her native Dominican Republic.

CCNY CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Dominican Artists in the United States – Josefina Báez

This collection focuses on the artist Josefina Baez, storyteller, performer, writer, theater director, and educator. She is the founder of the Ay Ombe Theater.

CCNY CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: Dominican Artists in the United States – Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

This collection focuses on the artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, whose works gain permanence through audios, photographs, props, drawings, rumors, embodied memories, costumes, websites, videos and publications.

University of Virginia Hospital Operating Amphitheater. 1914. Photoprint. Image and data from Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine). Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Artstor has published nearly 42,000 images from the U. S. National Library of Medicine’s Images from the History of Medicine, freely available to all for reuse under the Creative Commons Public Domain mark. Open Artstor: Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine) is part of an initiative to aggregate open museum, library, and archive collections across disciplines on the Artstor platform.

By now you know that Artstor’s Public Collections provide approximately 1.3 million freely accessible images and other materials from library special collections, faculty research, and institutional history materials. The collections are constantly growing, and as we browsed for Latin American content in preparation for Hispanic Heritage Month, we were delighted by what we found. Here are some notable highlights:

Clary. Conferencia Latinoamericana Sobre la Integracion de la Mujer en el Desarollo Economico y Social. 1977. Image and data from Wofford College: The Lindsay Webster Collection of Cuban Posters.

Wofford College: The Lindsay Webster Collection of Cuban Posters
The collection features approximately 350 works created in Cuba from the revolution through the 2000s. Many of the posters focus on Cuba’s efforts to spread messages of the revolution worldwide and to inspire others in the fight against oppression stemming from the legacies of imperialism and colonialism, as well as posters focused on promoting Cuban national pride, conservation, production, and culture.

Dartmouth: Ediciones Vigia Collection
In 1985, a Cuban poet Alfredo Zaldivar and an artist Rolando Estevez established a literary forum for a group of Cuban artists in Matanzas, Cuba and called it Ediciones Vigía. For over twenty years now the goal for these artists has been to create beautiful handmade books. Through all of the social and political shifts, and even a severe paper shortage, the artists have found ways to create works of enormous artistry, imagination, and creativity by using found and recycled materials.

Christine Løvmand. Flower piece. 1841. Oil on canvas. Image and data from Statens Museum for Kunst. CC0.

Artstor has published nearly 29,000 images from the Statens Museum for Kunst with the Creative Commons public domain dedication CC0, freely available to all. Open Artstor: Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) is part of an initiative to aggregate open museum, library, and archive collections across disciplines on the Artstor platform.

In this time of social distancing, it seems like everyone has turned to videoconferencing, from your teachers to your family. But perhaps you don’t want your grandparents to compare the size of your Brooklyn apartment to that of your cousin in Texas, or for your colleagues to see the dishes piling up in your kitchen sink. Open Artstor has you covered! We’ve selected a dozen artistic backgrounds to have you looking your best, including masterpieces by Van Gogh and Monet–download them for free at artstor.org/zoom.

Vincent van Gogh. Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. From Open Artstor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Creative Commons: Free Reuse (CC0)

Explore one of our finest museums virtually

Ogata Korin, follower of. Chrysanthemums by a Stream. Late 1700s – early 1800s. One of a pair of folding screens; ink and color on gilded paper. Image and data provided by The Cleveland Museum of Art. CCO 1.0.

In collaboration with The Cleveland Museum of Art and their comprehensive Open Access initiative, Artstor has published an expansive selection of works from this leading repository, freely available to all and with Creative Commons licenses in Open: The Cleveland Museum of Art.  Incorporating more than 10,000 years of history and iconic works from every corner of the globe, this collection includes nearly 29,000 images offering considerable coverage of the museum’s encyclopedic collection — paintings from Nicolas Poussin to Georgia O’Keeffe, precious jewels and scrolls from China, Japanese screens and kimonos, African and Native American ritual attire and objects, pre-Columbian gold, photography, and much more.

Science Museum Group. London Midland & Scottish Railway Collection. The “Coronation Scot” train at Penrith. 1938. 1997-7409. From a set of glass and film negatives. Science Museum Group Collection Online. Accessed October 17, 2019. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co423016. CC BY 4.0.

The Open: Science Museum Group collection is now available, featuring a selection of nearly 50,000 images from the Science Museum Group (UK) under Creative Commons licenses that span science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.