Chronicle of Higher Education
June 20, 2012

Underpaid and Restless: Study Presents a 'Dismal Picture' of Life as a Part-Time Professor

By Dan Berrett
Part-time faculty members work for low pay and scant benefits relative to their level of education and training, according to a long-awaited study, released today, of this fast-growing sector of the academic work force.
The median pay, $2,700 per course, and limited access to health insurance "stand in stark contradiction to higher education's claims about the value—including the economic value"—of higher education, write the authors of "A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members." The study was conducted by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, a group of 26 higher-education associations, disciplinary societies, and faculty organizations.


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How did we get here in 2012 that the nation's model for higher education is in the line of cuts?
June 1, 2012

California Cuts Threaten the Status of Universities

By JENNIFER MEDINA

LOS ANGELES — Class sizes have increased, courses have been cut and tuition has been raised — repeatedly. Fewer colleges are offering summer classes. Administrators rely increasingly on higher tuition from out-of-staters. And there are signs it could get worse: If a tax increase proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown is not approved this year, officials say they will be forced to consider draconian cuts like eliminating entire schools or programs.
For generations, the University of California system — home to such globally renowned institutions as Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — has been widely recognized as perhaps the best example of what public universities could be. Along with the California State University system and the state’s vast number of community colleges, higher education options here have long been the envy of other states.
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Getty launches full text website for art history research

By Jori Finkel
May 31, 2012, 3:00 p.m.
When UC Santa Barbara professor Ann Jensen Adams, known for her work on 17th century Dutch painting, was given the chance to try a new research website from the Getty last week, she first typed in the name of a major artist and author in the search field: Karel van Mander.

She was surprised to find online a full-text version of Van Mander's 1604 masterpiece, "Het Schilder-Boeck" (Book of Painters), which attempted to introduce Dutch and German painters like Vasari's classic "Lives of the Artists" did for so many Italians.

"Up came the work on the first hit," she said. "When I looked at who scanned the text, I realized it had been [online] for a while. But without this portal as a consolidator of information, I never would have found it."

The Getty Research Portal, which officially launched Thursday, was developed by the Getty Research Institute, the Getty museum's more academic sibling. But it's meant to be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection -- scholar, student or just browser -- like an art-specific version of Google Books.

In this case, though, instead of embarking on a mission to digitize the printed world, the Getty is making use of digitized material already available. So far, the website links to about 20,000 titles, drawn from the GRI's own holdings as well as from the libraries of eight institutions.
So far, Columbia University, the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the BrooklynArt Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Institute of the History of Art (INHA) in Paris, the University of Malaga in Spain and Heidelberg University in Germany have contributed. In all cases, the full digital texts of the books can be downloaded free of charge.

Because the texts are all in the public domain, published before 1923 in the U.S. or before 1909 in other countries, the website is stronger on Old Masters than, say, French Impressionism. A simple search for "Renoir" yields only five results; "Rembrandt" 51.

In either case, though, the emphasis is overwhelmingly Western. "We have only a few books in Chinese about Chinese art, for example," said Murtha Baca, who directs the Getty Research Institute's program in digital art history. "But that's something we really want to change. This is only the beginning: the big focus in the following months and years is collection development."


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-getty-debuts-full-text-web-site-for-art-history-research-20120530,0,6730780.story