Catalogs | Finding Journal Articles | Dictionaries and Encyclopedias | Full-Text Resources | Full-Text Journals | Visual Resources
Please note: Due to site-licensing agreements, access to some databases is limited to workstations within the Library, from the campus network, and/or remotely to those with current University of Chicago computing accounts.
- Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution Catalogs: Records describing collections of personal papers relating to American artists; records of galleries, museums, and art organizations; videos and interviews from the Archives’oral history project. The vast majority of these collections are available to the University of Chicago community on microfilm though interlibrary loan.
- The Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries: Contains all cataloged and on-order books, periodicals and auction catalogs held by the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.
- SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs: Contains records describing art auction catalogs as well as rare book sale catalogs dating from 1599 to auctions scheduled but not yet held.
- Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Catalog of 1500 video titles produced from the late 1960s to the present. Features video art, with an emphasis on early and seminal works central to the development of video as an art form; documentaries made by artists; and interviews with visual artists, photographers, and critics.
- WorldCat Contains over 40 million records for all types of materials cataloged by libraries worldwide. Holdings of the University of Chicago and many other Chicago area libraries are included.
- Art Abstracts (1984-present): A core resource and recommended starting place for art research, indexing more than 300 key, international arts publications. Subjects include archaeology, architecture, art history, city planning, crafts, film, folk art, graphic arts, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, musicology, painting, photography, sculpture, television, textiles and video. The print version of Art Index is available in the 4th floor reading room, Z5931.A75 RR4
- Art Index Retrospective: Web version of Art Index volumes 1-32, published between 1929 and 1984. The database cites articles from periodicals published throughout the world. Periodical coverage includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Use the art reproductions index to identify works of art that appear as illustrations in indexed articles.
- AATA Online: Abstracts of International Conservation Literature (1955-present): Comprehensive abstracting of the literature related to the preservation and conservation of artifacts--broadly interpreted to include works of art, cultural objects, museum collections, archives and library materials, architecture, historic sites, and archaeology. AATA Online incorporates all 36 volumes of Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts (N8560.A78 stacks) and its predecessor, IIC Abstracts, published between 1955 and the present. See this list of core journals
- ARTbibliographies Modern (1974-present): Best place to start for 20th-and 21st-century artists and movements; performance and multi-media art; and emerging trends in contemporary art. Coverage begins with Impressionism in the late 19th century. Photography is covered from its invention in 1839 to the present. Includes abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews.
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index using the ISI Web of Knoweldge: Provides access to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Citation Databases from 1982 to the present. Both general and cited reference searching are available.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals: The web version of Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals (Z5945.A932 RR4) covers architecture as well as interior design, city planning, archaeology and individual architects. Excludes periodicals in non-Western alphabets. Coverage is from 1934 to the present, with selective records dating to the 1860s.
- Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA),1973-present: Contains records describing the current literature of art, covering Western art (4th C.-present); painting, sculpture, drawing, prints; decorative and applied arts; industrial design architecture; popular and folk art; and selected contemporary art. Corresponds to BHA: Bibliography of the history of art = Bibliographie d'histoire de l'art, issued since 1990 (Z5937.B2 RR4); also incorporates RILA: International Repertory of the Literature of Art (1974-1990) in its entirety (Z5937.R2 RR4); and the segment of Repertoire d'art et d'archaeologie covering the years 1973-1989. A complete list of the journals indexed is available here.
The oldest art index, Repertoire d'art et d'archaeologie (Z5937.R42 RR4), began in 1910 and remains a useful research tool. Like BHA, the emphasis is on Western European art; few English-language sources are considered in the earliest years.
- Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance: Begun as a card file at the Warburg Institute in London in 1946, this file in the Dyabola database indexes and illustrates antique objects known to Renaissance artists. Images are provided when available, and each entry is presented with historical documentation and a modern bibliography. Click on the box labeled "IP-Zugang" before beginning.
- Design and Applied Arts Index: 1973-present. International index to articles in contemporary design and craft journals and newspapers. Includes conference reports, and book, video and exhibition reviews.
- Dyabola: Includes the web version of Archäologische Bibliographie, an annual bibliography of literature on classical, early Christian, Byzantine, early Medieval, and ancient Middle Eastern art and archaeology published by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Rome. Click on the box labeled "IP-Zugang" before beginning. A current CD-ROM version is available at the circulation desk.
- Francis: Indexes a wide range of multilingual, multidisciplinary information in the humanities and social sciences. The database is particularly strong in its coverage of art and archaeology: it includes records for western language publications covering non-western art--Asian, Near Eastern, Egyptian, Islamic, African, and pre-Columbian--in addition to all records in the Bibliography of the History of Art (see above). Coverage is 1984 to the present.
- Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals: Indexes 42 art journals published in the US during the 19th century.
- Index of Christian Art: Indexes works of art from early apostolic times to A.D. 1400, with an emphasis on art of the western world. Seventeen media are represented in the archive, including manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, painting, and glass. Records include bibliography, references to reproductions and, in some cases, links to images.
- International Medieval Bibliography: Select "Enter Databases" to search. Indexes articles relating to the Middle Ages from 450-1500. Includes research on medieval history in archaeology, architecture, arts, canon law, the crusades, daily life, folk studies, historiography, language, literature, military history, music, philosophy, political thought, religion, and social history. Covers Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Includes entries from periodicals, conference proceedings, essay collections and Festschriften. Corresponds to print and CD-ROM versions (Z6203.I6).
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Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus On Line: Developed as a public online resource by the Getty Institute, the Art and Architecture Thesaurus is a structured vocabulary containing 125,000 terms and other information that may be used to describe art, architecture, decorative arts, material culture, and archival materials. Each record within the Thesaurus is returned as a concept, which in turn, is linked to various terms, related concepts, sources for the data, and notes.
Grove Art Online: Covers all aspects of the visual arts from prehistory to the 1990s. Provides access to 45,000 articles on the art and culture of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Pacific, with links to images and further information in museum and other art-related web sites. Restricted to UC network.
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: One of the standards in the field, this guide offers cross-referenced articles for theorists such as John Ruskin and Walter Benjamin, national and ethnic critical traditions, periods, "schools," and literary forms. Includes extensive bibliographies (good starting point for further research) and indexes. The entries on Film Theory, Cultural Studies and Art Theory provide particularly useful overviews.
Oxford Reference Online - Art and Architecture: Provides access to A Dictionary of Architechture, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, The Oxford Dictionary of Art, and A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art.Restricted to UC network.
xreferplus - art: A collection of over 10 sources which provide in-depth information on everything from artists, art terms, works of art, architecture, design and fashion. Restricted to UC network.
The Dictionary of Art Historians: From Duke University, an index of basic biographical and methodological information about leading historians, museum directors, and scholars of western art history. Entries are compiled from a selection of major art historiographies. Unrestricted access.
- Art Theorists of the Italian Renaissance: A collection of 14th- through 17th-century treatises on art and architecture, structured around Vasari's Lives of the Artists and comprising over 80 of the earliest printed editions. Complete texts, illustrations, and notes by editors and translators are included.
- Écrits sur l'art de Diderot à Proust: Mostly French writings on art, encompassing aesthetics, philosophy, art history, and texts by painters and writers. The texts span a period of nearly two centuries, beginning with Père André’s L’Essai sur le beau from 1741, six years before the first salon, and ending with the last volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu from 1927; from Editions Bibliopolis and the ARTFL Project.
- Goethes Werkes auf CD-ROM: Call number: PT1891.C95 1995. CD-ROM may be checked out or used in the library..
- Perseus Project Digital Library: Database of visual and textual resources for the study of Archaic and Classical Greece. Searchable catalogs of architecture, sites, coins, vases and sculpture from selected museums include images and documentation. Perseus is also available in CD-ROM format, accessible from a dedicated workstation in the Classics Reading Room, JRL 470. CD-ROM contents differ somewhat from the on-line database. On-line database has unrestricted access.
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E-Journals: The Library subscribes to a large and growing collection of electronic journals. The e-journal finder is an alphabetical list of electronic journals, including descriptive information, to help you identify our holdings and select the most relevant resources. To browse titles in art, go to the e-journals page and click on the "title search/browse" tab (this is the default). Enter "art*" and select the "contains" radio button. Push <enter> or click "go." You should see an alphabetical list of e-journals. You can also search for titles containing "photograph*" (which would find photography and other variants of the word as well, or "architect*" to cite a few examples). For more information on any e-journal, click on the corresponding "more info" button.
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