Information Services

History of art

Some useful resources for History of Art are listed below.

Academic Video Online (Alexander St Press/ProQuest)

Access information:

Access on and off-campus

Description:

Academic Video Online is a multidisciplinary collection of videos that touches on the curriculum needs of virtually every department. With over 67,000 titles available now and 400 new titles per month, this collection is unmatched in its breadth. Academic Video Online allows students and researchers alike to analyse unique and valuable content from over 500 producers and distributors around the world.

Userguide: https://proquest.libguides.com/academicvideoonline/home

 

Acta Sanctorum

Access information. Access on and off campus
Description. The Acta Sanctorum Database is an electronic version of the complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum, from the edition published in sixty-eight volumes by the Societe des Bollandistes in Antwerp and Brussels. It is a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. The Acta Sanctorum Database includes all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indices. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina reference numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.

 

Art and Architecture Archive

Access information. Access on and off campus.
Description. This archival collection of digitized searchable backfiles from first issue to the year 2005, of many of the foremost art and architecture magazines of the 20th-century, supports scholarship across the spectrum of disciplines in the arts, from fine and applied arts through to interior design, industrial design, and landscape gardening. The title list includes: Apollo, Architectural Review, Architects Journal, Art Monthly, British Journal of Photography, Country Life, Eye, Graphis, Ornament and more.
Coverage: 1895 - 2005

 

Art and Architecture Source

Access information:

Access on or off campus.

Description: Art & Architecture Source covers a broad range of related subjects, from fine, decorative and commercial art, to various areas of architecture and architectural design. Providing over 600 full-text journals, more than 220 full-text books, and a collection of over 63,0000 images, it is designed for use by a diverse audience, including art scholars, artists, designers, students and general researchers.

 

Art Full Text and Art Abstracts

Access information: Available on and off-campus from EBSCOhost.
Description: Indexes 223 leading domestic and international periodicals pertaining to the art world. Covers advertising art, antiques, archaeology, architecture, art, design, films, museology and photography.
Coverage: 1984 to present.
Note: This resource will be replaced by Art & Architecture Source from 26th May 2017.

 

ArtNet Price Database

Access information:

Access on and off campus. Access via username and password - please see Electronic resources: usernames page for details.

Description:

Artnet price database is a comprehensive illustrated database of auction results for fine art, design, and decorative art works, with auction records dating back to 1985. Featuring sales from more than 1800 auction houses and 340,000 artists. This resource will be useful to art historians researching an artist’s market history, or appraising a collection.

Our subscription gives access to the Fine Art and Design and the Decorative Art sections of the Price Database.

 

ARTstor

Access information: Access on and off-campus.
Description: ARTstor is a digital library of images covering the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. The collections comprise contributions from outstanding museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. If you wish to download images for your own scholarly use you will need to Register with ARTstor, once you have logged in with your University Login. By registering your email address and creating a password you will create a profile which will allow you to download images and save images to folders as part of "My ARTstor". Note: To register for an ARTstor account, you must be on-site at your institution, or logged in through your institution's proxy server.
Coverage: One million plus digital images.
Userguide: http://artstor.libguides.com

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Over 3 million images from museums, galleries, private collections and contemporary artists all copyright cleared for educational use. Bridgeman Education gives you access to the visual culture of every civilization and every period from Prehistory to the present day across continents and civilisations.

 

 

Access information: Access on and off-campus.
Description: Contains over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes) published during the 18th Century, covering a range of subjects including history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, and science. The full text of the collection is searchable, from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music and sermons to advertisements.
Coverage: 18th Century.

 

Europeana

Access information: Freely available
Description: Funded by the European Commission, the Europeana portal provides access to millions of digitised books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records from all over Europe. Use Europeana to explore major European collections including collections from Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library and the Louvre as well as regional archives and local museums from every member of the EU.

 

EUscreen

Access information: Freely available
Description: The EUscreen portal offers free online access to thousands of items of audiovisual heritage. It brings together clips that provide an insight into the social, cultural, political and economic events that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries. As well as chronicling important historical events, the EUscreen portal allows you to explore television programmes that focus on everyday experience

 

Access information: Freely available
Description: Bibliotheque Nationale de France and partners' full-text collections. Two million items from books, periodicals, maps, scores, images, sound recordings manuscripts.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus
Description: The German Literary Expressionism Online database gives access to 149 journals, yearbooks, collections and anthologies from the early 20th century, many in full text.  The journals, yearbooks and anthologies of literary expressionism serve not only as sources on German literature of the modern era, but can also be used for the study of the history of art, theatre, film, dance and music between 1910 and 1930.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: The Getty Provenance Index presents a unified database of more than 2.2 million records from archival inventories, sales catalogs, and dealer stock books. Researchers can search across the whole database at once or choose to search any combination of source materials. A new interface, Getty Provenance Index: Additional Databases provides separate search access to additional provenance-related databases: the Collectors Files, Payments to Artists, and Public Collections.

 

Historical Texts

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

Historical Texts brings together four historically significant collections into a single database search platform: Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), 65,000 texts from the British Library 19th Century Collection and the UK Medical Heritage Library collection (UKMHL). For descriptions of and alternative access to EEBO and ECCO, see their separate entries in this Database A-Z list. The British Library 19th Century Collection offers over 65,000 recently digitised editions during 1789-1914, many of which are previously rare and inaccessible titles. The UK Medical Heritage Library collection (1800-1900’s) contains the images and full text of over 66,000 19th century European medical publications. The UKMHL visualisations are available on a separate platform

Coverage: 1473 to early 1910s

 

Index of Medieval Art

Access information:

Access on and off campus.

Description:

The Index of Medieval Art houses, contextualizes, and presents images and information relating to the iconographic traditions of the medieval world. Originally called the Princeton Index of Christian Art, reflecting its beginnings as a focused resource for the study of early Christian art, the Index now sets its parameters more broadly, including works from multiple medieval faith traditions as well as secular imagery.

As of 1 July 2023, the Index is accessible without a subscription.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.

For off campus access please use the University VPN - Access to the University network via the VPN.

  An account is also required to view the content.  Users can access the site using their existing A&AePortal credentials
Description: Interaction of Color Complete Digital Edition from Yale A&AePortal: The Interaction of Color Complete Digital Edition website is packed with elegant and innovative features that help you understand the book’s fundamental concepts, study the plates, and experiment with their own designs. Your A&AePortal institutional access is the same for the Interaction of Color website. Users with A&AePortal accounts can use their same credentials to access the website. All users must have an account to use the Interaction of Color website.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Full-text journal archive service providing access to complete back runs of all the scholarly journals currently available in JSTOR. Recent volumes are excluded, usually the last 3-5 years, but each year a further year is added to the archive. Each title is listed in DiscoverEd. About 4-5% of Artstor images migrated into Jstor are not accessible outside the United States.
Coverage:

The collections currently available are:

  • Arts & Sciences 1-15
  • Biological Sciences
  • Business I-IV Collection
  • Business & Economics
  • Ecology & Botany II
  • Global Plants
  • Health & General Sciences
  • Hebrew Journals
  • Ireland
  • Jewish Studies Collection
  • JSTOR Essential Collection
  • Language & Literature
  • Lives of Literature
  • Life Sciences
  • Mathematics & Statistics
  • Music
  • Religion and Theology
  • Security Studies
  • Sustainability
  • World Heritage Sites: Africa

The 19th Century British Pamphlets Collections is also available via JSTOR.  Userguides to the various collections can be found at https://guides.jstor.org

 

Oxford Art Online

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Oxford Art Online gives access to an expanding range of Oxford University Press art reference works: Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, all of which can be cross-searched or individually searched. Oxford Art Online can also be used as an image search tool.
Coverage: Prehistory to the present day.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: The electronic version of the celebrated Registres et lettres des Papes du XIIIe siecle (32 vols.; Rome, 1883- ) and the Registres et lettres des Papes du XIV e siecle (48 vols.; Rome, 1899- ). Complemented with unpublished information. More than 220,000 documents providing insights into the most varied aspects of medieval society. A valuable resource for researchers of artistic patronage, this database will be useful for History of Art, Divinity and History researchers.

 

Access information: Access on and off campus. there are currently some problems with access to Project Muse. To ensure full access, once onto the site click the Login link. Then under the Federations heading choose UK Federation (United Kingdom). Scroll through list and click on University of Edinburgh.
Description: Provides access to almost 600 full text journals from 30 scholarly publishers, covering the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.
Note: There is no subscription to the e-books, the only e-books available are the open access titles.

 

Access information: Access on and off-campus. Choose Shibboleth Log In or UK Federation.
Description: 1.5 million text records of historic monuments and of artefacts held in museums, galleries and archives, plus 500,000 related multimedia resources; video or sound clips, animations, graphics, plans, virtual reality objects and in particular, colour photographic images.
  Access to the text records and thumbnail images is freely available. Access to full resources is available under licence only, the terms of which restrict use of the material for no profit, no proliferation use in education.

 

Web of Science Core Collection

 
Access information:

Access on and off campus.

  Russian Science Citation Index is not presently included in the Web of Science.
Description:

Citations and abstracts to millions of journal articles and conference proceedings from all subjects. Cited reference searching, Impact Factors, h-indexes and email alerts available.

Coverage:

Arts & Humanities (1975 onwards), Science and Social Sciences Citation Indexes (both 1900 onwards), Conference Proceedings in Science and Social Science & Humanities (both 1990 onwards).

Also: Book Citation Indexes in Science and Social Sciences & Humanities (both 2005 onwards), Current Chemical Reactions (1986 onwards), Emerging Sources Citation Index (2015 onwards), Current Chemical Reactions (1985 onwards), Index Chemicus (1993 onwards).

Change "Search in:" to use: BIOSIS Citation Index (1926 onwards), Current Contents Connect (1998 onwards), Data Citation Index (1990 onwards), Derwent Innovations Index (1966 onwards), KCI-Korean Journal Database (1980 onwards), Medline (1950 onwards), PrePrint Citation Index (1991 onwards), ProQuest Dissertatoins & Theses Citation Index (1637 onwards), SciELO Citation Index (2002 onwards), Zoological Record (1864 onwards).

Help:

Publisher userguide

Finding articles which have in their reference lists a work you found useful ('cited reference searching'):

Cited Reference Searching (pdf)

 

Journal Citation Reports (JCR): 

Journal Impact Factors and other measures on JCR (pdf)

 

Yale A&AePortal

Access information:

Access on and off campus.

Description:

The Yale A&AePortal is an authoritative eBook and image resource that features important works of scholarship in the fields of history of art, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and design. With innovative functionality, including smart image searching, and extensive metadata, the site includes many out-of-print titles, key backlist, and recent releases from some of the world’s finest academic and museum publishers

 

Related Links