In 1994, the Department of Art History at the Madison campus received a technology grant to establish an image database of slides from its teaching collection. Around 1,800 slides of paintings, sculpture, and architecture, some of them unique, unpublished images, were digitized and stored on a Madison server to be accessed through a web interface by students. In addition, there are other advantages to this database. Its versatility allows each professor to create his or her own on-line syllabus and establish links to particular images used in their courses.
Students can search the database by artistic period, artist's name, location, or date.
A student can also call up two or three images in multiple Netscape screens and place them side by side for viewing. Also, in connection with a professor's syllabus, links to other internet sources from museums, universities, and research institutions provide some of the latest uses of technology in art history, from a virtual tour of a cathedral sponsored by Columbia University to reading of Pliny's travels through Greece at Tufts University. Professor Nick Cahill has been at the forefront in exploiting these technological innovations. Perhaps the most significant advantage to the Madison image database, in conjunction with other scholarly materials available on the internet, is the professor's ability to provide information in new ways or ways not yet evident in standard art history textbooks. The personalization of a professor's course, through the freedom to choose which material to present, allows for that professor's unique talent to surface.