Objects from the Pre-Columbian Collection of Hillwood Art Museum
In collaboration with Long Island University's Hillwood Art Museum, the Digital Initiatives team developed a website that showcases selections from the museum's outstanding collection of Pre-Columbian Art. A virtual exhibition, the website provides a visual tour accompanied by detailed text describing both the individual objects and a general overview of aspects of Pre-Columbian art represented by the specific objects. As of summer 2005, phase II of the project is underway to add recently acquired objects to the websites.

Cedar Swamp Historical Society Collection		Sheet Music, Title Page, Rockaway: A Ballad. 1840
With the support of the Cedar Swamp Historical Society the Digital Initiatives department is creating a local history website highlighting the university's archival holdings. The collection is comprised of approximately 1100 items including a variety of important 18th and 19th century paper-based materials. Among the highlights are original items such as Civil War newspapers, rare maps and atlases, illustrated song sheets, letters, journals, books and deeds documenting the history of some of Long Island's founding families. The aim of the project is to identify and preserve the most important pieces of this collection and to make them available to the research community. Original documents from the Cedar Swamp Historical Society are housed in the Library's Special Collections Department.

Hearst Archives: Visual Resources Association (VRA) Presentation and Publication Digitial Initiatives conducted a session at the annual VRA conference held in Miami in March 2005. The session, "The William Randolph Hearst Archives: A Medieval Cistercian Monastery in North Miami," was focused on the connections between the monastery and the Hearst archives acquired by Long Island University in 1972. The archives contain 125 albums that record his vast art collection, including 32 original photographs of the Spanish monastery, its architectural details, and its numerous artifacts in situ. Additionally, in the archives are thousands of art sales catalogs, several of which have handwritten marginalia from William Randolph Hearst.
The papers presented addressed the history of the Hearst archives at Long Island University, the original sale of Miami's Cistercian Monastery to Hearst, and the importance of the Hearst archival images as quite possibly the most complete historical documentary of the monastery in situ available today. Also discussed was Hearst's lifelong propensity to collect art, and the department's mission to explore, develop and implement digital projects that will convert the university's signature collections, such as the Hearst archives, into accessible research materials for the academic community.		The ancient Spanish Monastery, St. Bernard de Clairvaux, Miami, 2005; photo credit: D. Marciano

HTML by Robert Delaney
robert.delaney@liu.edu