UECLAA Online

Yi Shuai, University of Essex, United Kingdom
Gabriela Salgado, University of Essex, United Kingdom
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ueclaa/english/home/index.htm

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 2

The University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA) was founded in 1993 as a research collection, supporting and enhancing the Department of Art History and Theory's reputation for leading research and curatorship in the field of art from Latin America. In ten years it has grown to over 500 works, representing 14 countries and the best artists of recent decades. It includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, collage, mixed media, photographs, video art and installations, and is presently valued at over £1,000,000. UECLAA Online is a project funded by a research resource enhancement grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. It began in 2002 and will be launched on line in 2005. The aim of the project was to create a fully illustrated online catalogue, with related archival, bibliographical, interpretative and contextual material, and links to libraries and specialist institutions elsewhere. UECLAA Online is very close to fulfilling this aim, and from April next year it will provide an invaluable research and reference tool for scholars, researchers, museum and gallery personnel, education professionals around the world, and the Essex student community. The proposed demonstration of UECLAA Online will be led by two key members of its team. Database Officer Yi Shuai will present the project from a technical point of view: introducing structure and key functions of the online database, and a giving short tour around the system. This will give audiences an idea of the features that UECLAA Online will offer, such as myUECLAA, a registration system which will allow users to save selected images and contextual material for their personal research projects. Senior Researcher Isobel Whitelegg will introduce the unique research generated by this project, and indicate how this content will be able to continually and smoothly develop in line with the technical potential put into place.