Session G, 10:30-11:30 am

Untangling the Web: Using the World Wide Web for Art and Humanities Reference Services

Mary N. Hernandez Art & African American Studies Librarian Karen Daziel Tallman Fine Arts Humanties Librarian University of Arizona, Tucson
As information on and access to the World Wide Web proliferates, it has become a tool in helping students view images which heretofore have been avilable only thorugh personal visits to collections or reproduced in monographs or journals.

Faculty and students (graduate and upper division undergraduate) are finding ways to make viewing these images useful and helpful in doing research and study.

The accepted view that those in the fine arts and humanities are not computer literate is fast becoming a notion of the past as the demand for better imaging and more sites becomes imperative for the dissemination of information. The quality of images as transmitted across cyberspace is improving as those in art, biology, engineering and other disciplines are demanding high quality resolution. Those sites with poor quality are not surviving unless the improvements are measurable and in quick order.

Using the WWW has become an integral part of our jobs as art and humanities librarians at the University of Arizona: identifying sites, having sessions for faculty and students and maintaining a useful homepage are priority issues.

Librarians, faculty, and students need to know how to get to specific information, evaluate it and then link from their institution and homepage, so the users have access to world wide information.

A list of sites used in sessions at the University of Arizona will be provided.