The Rainbow Connection : An Image Database for the Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color

A new tool to assist in the use of the Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color was introduced in August 2005. A Web site with a personality to match the collection and an image database to facilitate virtual browsing increase accessibility for researchers at Yale and around the world. The Library Gazette published two bibliographies of the collection written by Robert L. Herbert in 1974 and 1978. The database is a modem version of this work, providing a constantly updated bibliography along with images of many of the works. Before the details of the database are discussed, a brief review of the interesting career of the collection's creator will provide useful background. For additional details, consult the resources used for this short summary: "A Biographical Note on Faber Birren" by Robert C. Kaufmann published in the Library Gazette in 1974, and tl1e "Biographical Sketch" in The Guide to the Faber Birren Papers (Manuscript Group i567) held in the Sterling Library's Manuscripts and Archives. Faber Birren (1900-88) was born in Chicago to a noted landscape painter father and an accomplished pianist mother. After growing up in an artistic atmosphere, he took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while still in high school. He entered the University of Chicago in 1919, but left after only two years to pursue his own course of study on color through reading and correspondence with physicists, ophtl1almologists, psychologists, and others from whom he could gain knowledge about color and human interaction with it. His first articles on color were ?ublished in 1924. Then, in 1934, with a need to support his new family, he established his own consulting business, which was to become very successful. As most of his work was on the east coast, Birren moved