A freely-available, comprehensive database of over 100,000 abstracts of literature related to the preservation and conservation of material cultural heritage.
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Art, Architecture, & Design
Unless otherwise noted, these resources are available at the Art Institute of Chicago, the SAIC campus, or from other locations with an ARTIC username and password.
Types of material covered: Journal articles and conference proceedings
Dates covered: 1932 to the present
This international biographical database of artists contains more than a million artist entries. The database covers painters, graphic designers, sculptors, architects, designers, photographers, calligraphers, craftsmen and many more.
Types of material covered: Biographical information on artists
Provides bibliographic access to over 2,000 international, state and local history journals covering the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. For coverage of world history, excluding the United States and Canada, use Historical Abstracts.
Types of material covered: Journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations.
Dates covered: 1964 to the present.
Combines Anthropological Literature, the citation database of Harvard University's Tozzer Library, with the British Museum's Anthropological Index, providing access to over 2,500 journals and edited works. Useful for African and Native American art.
Types of material covered: Journals, edited works, and monographic series.
Dates covered: Selected late 19th century literature to the present.
Provides annotated citations on modern and contemporary art from the 19th century to the present, including photography, performance art and installation works, video art, computer and electronic art, body art, artists' books, jewelry, as well as the traditional fine arts of painting, printmaking, sculpture, and drawing.
Types of material covered: Books, dissertations, exhibition catalogs, essays within collected works, and articles from current journals.
Dates covered: 1974 to the present.
Types of material covered: Journal articles only.
Dates covered: Indexing coverage begins September 1984; abstracting coverage begins January 1994. Selected full-text coverage begins 1997.
Provides citations and some abstracts for a wide range of international art journals, giving general coverage of most art topics and periods.
Types of material covered: Journal Articles
Dates covered: 1929-1984
Types of material covered: Artists' signatures
Dates covered: Provides signatures for artists working from 1400 to the present. International in scope.
Provides biographical and professional data on over 120,000 American artists from the early 16th century through the present.
Types of material covered: Images, biographies, and auction records
An index to journal articles on architectural design, history and practice, landscape architecture, historic preservation, interior design, and urban planning. More than 2,800 current and ceased US and foreign journal titles are indexed. In 2004 journal citations from the 10 volume Burnham Index to Architectural Literature were added. Monographic, AIC scrapbook, and Burnham Library Architectural Archives microfilm (Microfilm 1973 1) references from the Burnham Index are not included in Avery.
Types of material covered: Journal articles only.
Dates covered: 1930s to the present; selective coverage dating back to the 1860s.
Benezit is one of the most comprehensive biographical dictionaries in the field of art history, including coverage of artists across all media, from painters and sculptors to calligraphers, ceramicists, illustrators, installation artists, and performance artists. It includes over 190,000 entries from the first English print edition (2006), plus revisions and new biographies exclusively available online.
Also included are artists' signatures, monograms, stamps of sale, detailed museum listings, bibliographies, exhibition information, and auction records
Benezit is updated three times per year to reflect new scholarship, additions to the bibliographies, and corrections. It is bundled with other Oxford databases, like Grove Art, and can be searched in conjunction or on its own.
Integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, an extensive E-Book collection, an image bank, and more.
Types of material covered: Encyclopedia articles, journal articles, images, e-books
Dates covered: All periods of history
Includes citations from the following sources: BHA (1990-2007), the International Bibliography of Art (IBA) - 2008 to part of 2009, and the International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA, 1974-1989). BHA covers European and American architecture, painting, sculpture, drawing, prints and decorative arts, industrial design, folk art, photography, and performance art from late antiquity (4th C. AD) to the present. BHA no longer includes the Répertoire d'Art et d'Archéologie (RAA, 1973-1989). See RAA in print in the Library Reading Room. Abstracts are in French or English.
Types of material covered: Journal articles, dissertations, book chapters, books, conference proceedings, exhibition catalogs
Dates covered: 1974-2007
The Conservation Information Network brings together over 190,000 bibliographic records on the conservation of objects of all types.
For coverage of Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts from 1998 to present go to the Getty Conservation Institute's AATA Online, which includes the full run of both the IICA and AATA.
Types of material covered: Technical reports, conference proceedings, journal articles, books, audiovisual and unpublished materials.
Dates covered: The following dates are covered: Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts (1932-1942). International Institute for Conservation Abstracts (1955-1965). Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts (1955-1997).
Access note: Free access. Available to everyone.
Provides coverage of more than 100 design and design-related journals most of which have ceased publication, but which are distinctly important to the development of design concepts in the early 20th century. DAR provides broad, international coverage on a wide range of subjects in the fields of industrial and product design, architecture, interior design, furniture design, ceramics, glass, jewelry, metalsmithing, fashion and textile design, graphic design, and others.
Types of material covered: Journal articles only
Dates covered: 1894-1986
Contains over 130,000 annotated references from more than 500 design and craft journals on industrial and product design, architecture, interior design, furniture design, ceramics, glass, jewellery, metalsmithing, fashion and textile design, graphic design, etc.
Types of material covered: Journal articles only.
Dates covered: 1973 to present.
Covers more than 100 journals and yearbooks, including important titles that have not been indexed or abstracted before. It provides information about more than 8,000 designers and design-related organizations that were influential in the 20th century world of design, including over 1,000 female designers.
Types of material covered: Profiles of designers and design organizations
Dates covered: 1894-1986
Includes digitized nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century decorative and fine arts journals. Also includes a bibliography of useful web sites in international design and art.
Types of material covered: Full text journals and links to web sites
Dates covered: Journals are from the 19th century and early 20th
This multidisciplinary resource indexes over 4,200 journals covering the humanities (67%), social sciences (30%), and economics (3%), with abstracts for most records. Useful for Asian art.
Types of material covered: Serials, journal articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, French dissertations, exhibition catalogs, reports, etc.
Dates covered: 1984 to the present.
Provides bibliographic access to over 2,000 international journals covering the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life).
Types of material covered: Journal articles, book reviews, and international dissertations.
Dates covered: 1954 to present.
Descriptions and some images of approximately 80,000 works of Christian Art are included in this index. Both searching and browsing are available.
Types of material covered: Records of works of art, subject records, and citations that support the works of art. Also, some images are available.
Dates covered: From early apostolic times up to the mid 16th century
Successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). Covers European art from late antiquity to the present, American art from the colonial era to the present, and global art since 1945.
Types of material covered: Abstracts of journal articles
Dates covered: Some articles from 1990-2007, but mostly content written from 2008 to the present
Provides full-text access to the back issues of hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.
A list of journals is available via the JSTOR site.
Types of material covered: Journal articles
Dates covered: Dates of coverage vary; most journals' current 3-5 years are NOT included.
Technical tip: When emailing an article from JSTOR, first save it as a pdf on your desktop and then attach the pdf to your email.
Database of materials used in architecture and design. Searchable by product, process, and application. Emphasis on cutting-edge materials and applications.
Types of material covered: Product descriptions and information.
Dates covered: Current edition.
Provides full-text access to the entire Project Muse historical journal archive in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Types of material covered: Journal articles
Dates covered: Dates of coverage vary by journal; most current year may NOT be included.
Technical tip: When emailing an article from Project MUSE, first save it as a pdf on your desktop and then attach the pdf to your email.
Types of material covered: Encyclopedic coverage of all aspects of fine and applied arts and architecture. Also included are biographies, images, and dictionary entries.
Dates covered: All eras
Technical tip: When emailing an article from Oxford Art Online, first save it as a pdf on your desktop and then attach the pdf to your email.
Provides digitized historic fire insurance maps for most cities and towns in Illinois. The large scale plans chart the growth and development of these communities. An index to the maps is available on the Chicago Public Library web site.
Types of material covered: Maps, city guides.
Dates covered: 1867-1970
First ever scholarly, primary source database focusing on adult comic books and graphic novels. Beginning with the first underground comix from the 1960’s to the works of modern sequential artists, this collection will contain more than 75,000 pages of comics and graphic novels, along with 25,000 pages of interviews, criticism, and journal articles that document the continual growth and evolution of this artform.
Types of material covered: Pages of comics and graphic novels, interviews, criticism, and journal articles.
Dates covered: 1960s to the present.
Browseable and searchable content from the American fashion magazine Vogue.
Dates covered: 1892-Current
A freely available index of Art periodicals and alternative press journals such as SMS, The Fox, Situationist Times, Grey Room, Critical Inquiry, and others. Requires registration to search.
Types of material covered: Journal articles
Dates covered: Dates vary depending on the periodical, but many go back to the 1960s.
Access note: Free access but registration required.
SAH Archipedia is an authoritative online encyclopedia of the built world published by the Society of Architectural Historians and the University of Virginia Press, and contains histories, photographs, and maps for more than 8,500 structures and places
An online search platform providing global access to digitized art history texts in the public domain. Through this multilingual, multicultural union catalog, scholars can search and download complete digital copies of publications for the study of art, architecture, material culture, and related fields.
Types of material covered: Digitized full text publications.
Access note: Free access. Available to everyone.
