CARTOGRAPHY ASSOCIATES OFFERING SUBSCRIPTIONS TO NEW FINE ART COLLECTION FROM CORBIS

In partnership with Thomson Gale, part of The Thomson Corporation, and Corbis, Cartography Associates announced it is offering a premier, new digital image collection for educators in the field of fine art history that encompasses everything from the works of Andy Warhol to cave paintings.

For the first time, educators will have access to Corbis' vast fine art collections through the Corbis Images for Education: Fine Art Collection, an international treasury of more than 140,000 fine art and architecture images that is distinguished not only for its quality but also its comprehensive coverage of art periods, styles, and ethnographies. The Fine Art Collection incorporates sources from around the world, including museums, cultural institutions, auction houses, artists estates, photo agencies, and individual photographers.

Beginning in October, Cartography Associates and Thomson Gale will offer educational subscriptions to the collection using Luna Imaging's Insight software, which incorporates powerful tools for searching, working with images and creating presentations.

"The Fine Art Collection is unparalleled in its breadth and depth and can only be improved upon by its pairing with the powerful tools available in Luna's Insight software," says Cartography Associates President David Rumsey. "Corbis and Thomson Gale should be applauded for opening up this important resource to the education community."

Cartography Associates is also offering the Corbis Images for Education: Historical Collection (formerly known as Corbis Images for Education) in Insight. The collected works include over 500,000 digital images from Corbis' popular art, historical, nature, science, and space collections.

The license that comes with both of the subscriptions is a broad-rights educational use license, which allows library patrons, faculty, staff, and students to access the collections for any educational purpose. It is expected that both collections will continue to grow in size over the coming years.

By providing access to these collections in Insight, instructors have the ability to easily search and select images and other related multimedia from the Corbis collections, prepare lectures, and display presentations in the classroom or remotely over a secure Internet connection. Replacing the traditional slide carousel, Insight revolutionizes the way teaching and research are conducted at many leading educational and cultural heritage institutions from Stanford University to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Using Insight, instructors are building visual presentations for classroom use that can be as simple as a slideshow rotating through each image, or more complex comparing multiple images side-by-side. Once a presentation is saved it can be reused and published online for further student study.

The Corbis collections will complement other major art and historical collections distributed by Cartography Associates, which also provides online distribution of digital images to AMICA, a collection of more than 100,000 high quality works of art from prominent museums worldwide representing a range of cultures and time periods from contemporary art, Native American and Intuit art, to ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian works along with Japanese and Chinese works.

In addition, Rumsey provides free access to his own private collection of rare 18th and 19th century North and South American maps, highly regarded by researchers and the public alike, as evidenced by the thousands of Web site visitors each day to www.davidrumsey.com.

Cartography Associates provides online presentation of historical maps and other culturally significant materials for research and education using the Internet. The David Rumsey Map Collection site has been featured in Wired Magazine, USA Today, and TechTV and has received numerous Web awards, including Yahoo Pick of the Week, and Best of the Net from About.com.

Thomson Gale™ (www.gale.com) serves the world's information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet. It is best known for the accuracy, breadth and convenience of its data, addressing all types of information needs - from homework help to health questions to business profiles - in a variety of formats - books, Web-based solutions and microfilm.

For more information contact: