Getty President and CEO James Cuno announced online catalogs in a blog post on the Getty Iris today.
“Two years ago we made hundreds of publications—many of which are out of print—freely available to scholars and the interested public around the world with our Getty Publications Virtual Library,” said Cuno. “As a next step in our ongoing commitment to open content, we are making all digital versions of these two new online catalogs available free-of-charge.”
The publications released in this launch include Roman Mosaics in the J. Paul Getty Museum, a catalog by Getty curator Alexis Belis that accompanies the exhibition Roman Mosaics across the Empire that is currently on display at the Getty Villa, and Ancient Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily in the J. Paul Getty Museum, a catalog by noted archaeologist Maria Lucia Ferruzza in collaboration with Getty curator Claire Lyons.
As born-digital projects, the online versions of these books offer readers exciting new features, from zoomable images to interactive maps, linked footnotes and glossaries to 360-degree-views of objects. Both publications are available to read online or may be downloaded free-of-charge as a PDF or ebook. For a modest charge they are also available in print on demand. Further, these two catalogs are the first in a series of open access digital publications that the Getty has slated for the coming years.
“Creating these online catalogs comes out of the Getty’s conviction that an appreciation of the arts is crucial to a vital and civil society,” said Cuno. “We are committed to sharing our educational resources and the breadth of our collections as part of our mission to promote knowledge and understanding of the visual arts in all their dimensions, and we are delighted to give these two important works of scholarship a presence in the digital sphere.”