Client list

:: Clients of the Archivision Digital Library (as of March 2009)

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Client reviews of the Archivision Digital Library

:: Review 1 ::

Images that we have licensed from your firm have become the main content of the "Worldwide Building and Landscape Pictures" database that we provide to support teaching and research at Penn State. In spite of its relatively small size, that database has proven to be very popular here. The number of connections-per-year ranks in the top one-third of the hundreds of databases we provide to students and faculty.

Henry Pisciotta reports that the quality of your photographs has been praised by many faculty and students and that you have been an especially cooperative and enjoyable vendor. Adding additional Archivision images to our existing collections will be a boon to teaching in design and related disciplines.

Nancy L. Eaton
Dean of University Libraries and
Scholarly Communication

The Pennsylania State University
510 Paterno Library
Univrsity Park, PA 16802

:: Review 2 ::

The College of Architecture at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte has been an Archivision client since their base collection was released in 2004. There are so many advantages to the Archivision collection, including:

1. mmediate access to 28,000 high-quality images. With the purchase of the base package, I was able to jump-start our digital collection with a strong set of core images.

2. The addition modules that Archivision releases annually, each containing 6,000 images, allows for planned growth of my collection.

3. Very extensive metadata attached to each image. This metadata now conforms to the VRA Core 4.0 validating XML and is mappable to Excel.

4. In addition, Archivision has created pre-built Archivision templates for MDID, Luna, EmbARK, and VireoCat for each Archivision Library Module. This means that anyone using these delivery or cataloguing systems can purchase the Archivision collection and eliminate weeks and months of set-up time. This feature alone is priceless!

5. For those that subscribe to ARTstor, which we do, you can also gain immediate access to Archivision modules within your ARTstor subscription, at no additional costs. This allows seamless searches with ARTstor and Archivision content, while greatly expanding the available architecture and landscape architecture content for our ARTstor users. Archivision also provides a hosted solution with Luna for those that do not have ARTstor.

6. Extremely reasonable cost of the package - when you consider the images, metadata, pre-built collections and access options, and customer service you receive, it is clear this is an excellent value for the money.

Since I began building the digital collection here at UNC-C, Scott has continuously provided outstanding products and services. He has helped make the digital transition virtually effortless by offering outstanding customer service - he has a way of always anticipating his customer's needs. I could not be more pleased with the products and service that Archivision offers.

Jenna A. Duncan
Visual Resources Lecturer
College of Architecture
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223
(704) 687-4025

http://coavrc.uncc.edu/

:: Review 3 ::

We just licensed the full digital image archive from Archivision and we are really thrilled with it!

The collection reflects owner Scott Gilchrist's background in Architecture (B.A. in Architecture and M.A. in Architecture History). He also began the Visual Resources Centre in the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design, University of Toronto, in the early 1990s, building and organizing the collection in the early days of computerization, so he knows just what VR Curators are going through and the kind of things we need and want. He then turned his focus to professional photography and setting up Archivision. He also became a professional stock photographer for Masterfile (you can see a selection of these images at masterfile.com by typing Scott Gilchrist into the search field).

So he's brought all this experience and photographic skill to Archivision. All of his 100,000+ slides are headed towards his digital collection. The 1,400 images seen on the Masterfile site are just a mere sample when compared to what is available at Archivision.

The images are beautiful, but moreover, the entire content of the Archivision collection is relevant to those seeking to build or augment architecture or design collections.

He has expanded his digital collection from a mere 5000 images (we started out with this collection two years ago) to 16,000 over the past 18 months and he has placed the entire collection into EmbARK Cataloguer. This is really the best thing about it. Originally, the data was raw...and I just didn't have the time to work with it, as we were also simultaneously digitizing our own slides and I only had time to deal with images that had full catalogue records already completed. To digitize AND catalogue within the time deadline given by our faculty just wasn’t feasible.

So, in discussions with Scott I told him about this difficulty and how much more helpful to users the images would be if they came with integrated data...and he listened! I recommended my beloved database program, EmbARK by Gallery Systems, enthusiastically and facilitated contact between the two companies. Since then, Scott hired a new staff member with a background in art history who has enriched and expanded and checked this data over the past year and has helped with all those pesky authority files. His metadata (36 fields!) is all VRA Core based, and easily customizable to other user's own systems.

We have EmbARK Cataloguer and EmbARK Web Kiosk (our online searchable database) and this week migrated the data and images successfully from his database into ours, mapping to our custom data fields, but also incorporating many of his fields which contain valuable information that we didn't have.

The Archivision database comes also as an Excel spreadsheet, which makes it easy for anyone with any type of database program to import it. The data is extensive and the images are diverse and of superior quality. I've been digitizing our own collection for 2 years, and the Photoshop editing of these old slides is the most time-consuming aspect of the project; in this time period, I've been able to put approximately 7500 images & related data from our collection online, but now with this new acquisition, of all new images, already cleaned and sized, I've put the 16,000 new images and records online in one week. So that's been pretty incredible, and quite the lifesaver when dealing with requests, pressures, and demands from the faculty and students for instant digitization of everything.

This is a great collection for those who are just in the beginning phases of digitization, or even those, like us, who are in the midst and need a high quality supply of images and related data.

Archivision's collaboration with Gallery Systems enables the use of EmbARK and they come as one for those in need of a database program, or as a stand-alone collection for those who already have a database. And unlike most image suppliers, this collection's focus is on architecture and design, which fits our needs perfectly.

Moreover, the owner, Scott Gilchrist, is really attuned to his users and extremely willing to help us meet our needs. His next goal is to expand the contemporary and non-Western collection. So we're looking forward to our next archive installment, especially of his up-coming trip to cover new architecture in the Pacific Rim. The collection from Archivision works really well for us. And I happily recommend it to anyone.

Samantha Pawley
Visual Resource Curator

Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
University of Toronto
230 College Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 1R2
Ph. 416.978.0860
Fx. 416.971.2094
e-mail