Excerpt: In academia, technology is progressing rapidly and ‘digitizing’ is the new excitement that gives butterflies to the researcher’s belly. Researchers are uploading and digitizing their fieldwork findings and productions, by uploading photos to databases, creating short films, uploading books onto personal websites, or creating websites for visual consultation of their fieldwork—to name a few virtual tools. But the most interesting aspect arising from this technological progression is the way in which the virtual world is becoming a space, more or less a tool for translation. It is crossing disciplinary fields, and as a result, this overlapping is affecting the methods used in research, even the way we think and work in academia. Academia is becoming more interdisciplinary, pushing the boundaries as the exchange of ideas, methods, discourse, resources, and fieldwork approaches is becoming more fluid. As an art historian trained in the humanities, and an anthropologist trained in the social sciences, I am encountering this daily with my own work, with other undergraduate and graduate students, and even professors, librarians, Image consultants, etc. Thesis: The perspective of researching the research is different from selecting a subject or topic that appears foreign, waiting for us researchers to uncover and dissect. But with every relationship, both ends need to be heard. In this sense my primary objective is to explore researcher’s tools in the virtual world and whether virtual, specifically digital, methods have the consequence of distance, or encourage intimacy between the researcher and the subject(s), the virtual and physical world, and between disciplinary fields. Purpose/Objective: This study will push boundaries between two disciplinary fields: anthropology and art history (social sciences and the humanities) through the research of virtual spaces that act as virtual tools for the research. This will be achieved primarily by creating a database and cataloging digital images. As fields are becoming more cross interdisciplinary, the virtual world is becoming the primary space for channeling that exchange of fieldwork, discourse, methods, resources, and theories. To read more from this paper, email art historian, Madelyne Oliver, at: madelyne.oliver@yahoo.com

1. WHAT IS RESEARCH IN THE VIRTUAL
WORLD?
Madelyne Oliver

2. THE LITERATURE: PREFERENCES TO WEB-BASED
TOOLS OR NON-WEB-BASED TOOLS AMONG
SCHOLARS IN THE VISUAL ARTS
•Catherine Larkin, (2010) “Looking to the Future While Learning from
the Past: Information Seeking in the Visual Arts” Art Documentation,
vol 29, n. 1.
Photo
courtesy of
Catherine
Larkin
©2010

3. Photo
courtesy of
Catherine
Larkin ©2010

4. Photo
courtesy of
Catherine
Larkin ©2010

5. LITERATURE REVIEW CONTINUED…
Jennifer Mayer and Cheryl Goldenstein (2009), “Academic libraries
Supporting Visual Culture: A Survey of Image Access and Use,” Art
Documentation, vol 28, N. 1.
Photo
courtesy of
Catherine
Larkin ©2010

6. Photo courtesy of
Catherine Larkin ©2010

7. Photo
courtesy of
Catherine
Larkin ©2010

8. PREDICTIONS
 Visual scholars are becoming more adaptive to technological
resources because web-based tools are used increasingly more
often than non-web-based tools for seeking information and
collecting research, most especially images.
The authority of online resources and web-based tools are still
heavily questioned by scholars and not seen as reliable as print or
physical resources and tools.

9. OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study is to push the boundaries between two
disciplinary fields: anthropology and art history (Social Sciences and the
Humanities) through personal observation and interactions with the
virtual space of the online archive and labeling digital images for
submission to SAHARA.
In essence, I will explore how these web-based tools and online spaces
channel the exchange of methods, resources, and data from both
academic disciplines and if the increasing interaction with the virtual
world encourages an intimate relationship between the researcher and
the researched subject.

11. TAGGING AND CATEGORIZING…..

12. EXCHANGE OF VISUAL INFORMATION: DIGITAL
TOOLS AND METADATA

13. COMMON WEB-BASED IMAGE RESOURCES: ONLINE
IMAGE ARCHIVES ARTSTOR AND SAHARA

14. WEB-BASED TOOLS/ONLINE INTERFACES
EXPLORED:
Zotero
SAHARA
Society of Architectural Historians (www.sah.org)
ARTstor
JSTOR
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Online www.jsah.org
Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO
ALNA (Association of Librarians of North America)
The Dictionary of Art
Grove Art Online
Full Text
Anthropology Plus
Anthropology Index
AnthroSource
Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrosprective
ISI Citation Databases:
 Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (1900- present)
 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) (1975- present)

15. TESTING SCHOLARS’ ONLINE INFORMATION
SEEKING BEHAVORS FOR THE YEAR 2011…
How often do you use a computer and online tools for research?
Frequency Percent
Always 4 57.1
Sometimes 2 28.6
None 1 14.3
Total 7 100%

16. What web-based tool do you utilize the most for
research?
Google 3 42.9
Youtube.com 3 42.9
Google Scholar 1 14.3
Total 7 100%
How do you search for images?
Databases (ARTstor, 5 56%
SAHARA, AP images)
General search 5 44%
engines or image
search engines
(Google, yahoo, flickr)
Library’s 0 0
collection/prind index
Total 9 100%

17. Electronic and digital images facilitate and inspire my work.
Strongly Agree 2 29%
Agree 5 71%
Neutral 0 0%
Disagree 0 0%
Strongly Disagree 0 0%
Total 7 100%
If you believe web-based tools serve as authoritative
sources, please rate the level of authority accordingly.
Excellent 0 0%
Good 3 43%
Neutral 3 43%
Fair 1 14%
Poor 0 0%
Total 7 100%

18. WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY ABOUT
RESEARCH?
Such web-based tools for cataloging
images and articles facilitated close
observations of art historians’ use of the
virtual space for personal research and
the public exchange of visual data.
Anthropological training in participant
observation aided the exploration of
these web-based tools, revealing an
encouraging intimate relationship between
the researcher and his or her subject matter.
Related literature indicated that academics
frequently use web-based tools for
information-collecting purposes, in which
disciplinary fields overlap.