HW Wilson's Art Museum Image Gallery is a replacement for the AMICO Library (RR 2004/99), also a product provided by Wilson. Although in a market where it must compete with behemoths like ARTstor, Art Museum Image Gallery has some features to recommend it as well as some unique offerings. The scope of this product is large: art from 3000 BCE is included as well as contemporary pieces.
The collection currently consists of 96,000 images from 21 museums and galleries; the list of participating museums is available at www.hwwilson.com/databases/artmuseum_museums.htm, and the Wilson Company hopes to contract with other museums within the next 18 months. The offerings are also more varied than ARTstor's; the textile portion of Art Museum Image Gallery deserves particular attention. Not only does Art Museum Image Gallery serve students and professionals in the visual arts, it will be of value to individuals in anthropology and history.
The search interface is very clean and a frame on the left side of the screen gives easy access to navigation tools. The database loads instantly on a broadband connection and within one‐two minutes on a dialup connection. The default is Advanced Search; this is also the preference of the reviewer because it allows a user to select a particular collection (collections are called a Physical Description in this database). These collections include but are not limited to: architecture; costume and jewelry; decorative arts; drawing and watercolors; installations; painting; sculpture; and textiles. It is also possible to do a Smart Search, which is a keyword search across all collections. Results may be sorted by date or by artist as well as by relevance.
When searching for a creator by name (e.g. Georgia O'Keeffe), either the last name or the whole name will bring up the same results; it is not necessary to capitalize. However, to get only the works of the particular artist, the user should change the Smart Search drop down menu to Artist. Clicking on a thumbnail image from the results list opens another page with the thumbnail image; the user must click again to open the image in full size. On a 17 inch screen, one must scroll to see the entire image in its full size even when the screen is set on the smallest resolution (1280×1024 pixels); however, when using the Firefox browser, the user can right‐click on View Image to make the image fit on one screen.
Images can be printed or saved as a jpeg file. Art Museum Image Gallery includes a button on the navigation bar for both these functions. Images can also be exported into a bibliographic software program such as End Note.
Art Museum Image Gallery has a few flaws related to navigation. Because the database selection screen is not customized (all HW Wilson databases appear and the user checks off which ones he/she is searching) the limits are not customized either, and the presence of a full text limit in an image‐only database is bound to confuse novice users.
In the same vein, a Journal Directory, which allows users to search in specific journals, is out of place in an image‐only database. Clicking on a thumbnail image in the results lists should open a full‐size image, not another thumbnail; the extra click seems like an unnecessary step.
This being said, the many clean, useful features of this database far outstrip the less useful aspects. In some aspects, such as the inclusion of textiles and cultural artifacts, Art Museum Image Gallery tops its competitors. Another excellent feature is the ability to sort a search by the date of the work; this is useful whether searching for a single artist or a style and it is a feature not available in ARTstor. The inclusion of contemporary paintings is another plus for this database.
Art Museum Image Gallery should be considered by any library that has need of a quality image database that is more affordable and/or less complicated than others on the market.
