We are currently in the process of building the collection, and then will put more focus on rolling out collection features. Thanks for your patience!

The images and metadata all 'live' on individual artist Flickr accounts. We use a Flickr Group to pull those images into one collection.

Submissions are currently reviewed by the founders of the collection, Ted Vogel, Assistant Professor of Art, Program Head in Ceramics, Department of Art, Lewis & Clark College, and Margo Ballantyne, Visual Resources Curator, Lewis & Clark College. After the collection has reached a substantial size, a broader curatorial board consisting of artists who have contributed to the collection will be established.

We are currently working out a strategy for long term preservation of the collection as well as strategies for migration of the collection to platforms beyond Flickr. Our first step in this process has been to integrate the Creative Commons license into the submissions process for images, thus assuring our ability to repurpose the images outside of Flickr. Some ideas for long term preservation include a dark archive of the collection, and incrementally moving the collection into other larger online collections of art images.

In the pilot state, the project is currently supported by the efforts of a group of employees at Lewis & Clark College and hosted on Watzek Library's web site. To expand and sustain the project, we are seeking funds from external sources. We also recently received a grant from NITLE that will help us build and promote the collection.

Not at this time. Artists are invited by the accessCeramics staff (via the curatorial board) to contribute images. If you want to be considered for an invitation, please send five or more images and a current resume and/or a portfolio link to Margo Ballantyne (margo@lclark.edu).

Once you login, you can either select one of your existing Flickr images, or upload a new one. Once you select or upload an image, follow the link to catalog the image. Once submitted, an image waits in a queue to be accepted or rejected by the Collection curator.

All images in the collection should be sufficient for classroom use. Please submit images that meet these specifications:

• Image DPI (dots per inch): 72
• Short end: at least 768 px
or
• Long end: at least 1024 px

At this point we are not accepting CDs with images, though we are more than happy to help you through the process of submitting your images on Flickr. Just email Jeremy (jeremym@lclark.edu), and he will help you get started.

Once submitted, an image waits in a queue to be accepted or rejected by the Collection curator. Even when accepted, it may take a while for Flickr to make the image appear in the Collection.

Once your Flickr account is set up and your invitation to the group is accepted, the easiest way to contribute is to use our upload feature, and then catalog the images when uploaded. We can also create a Flickr account for you, and then give you the login and password (which you can then change). If you're interested in this approach, email or call Jeremy McWilliams (jeremym@lclark.edu, 503-768-7267).

The metadata fields are a mix of Dublin Core and VRA Core. This route was chosen to simplify the image cataloging process. Most field values in cataloging menus were selected from the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus.

Each piece of metadata is stored with the image on Flickr as a machine tag. These tags allow "field->value" relationships. Metadata is also redundantly stored in a MySQL database.

Contributors to the Collection must own the copyright on images submitted. During the cataloging process, each image is assigned a Creative Commons license.

This site is written in PHP, and uses phpFlickr to communicate with the Flickr API. The site also uses JQuery for various javascript and AJAX functions. Metadata is stored in a MySQL database.

Please contact Jeremy McWilliams (jeremym@lclark.edu) if you have questions about this site. For other questions, please contact Margo Ballantyne (margo@lclark.edu) or Miranda Costa (missmcosta@gmail.com).