Art and Art History

Best Database Choices for Art and Art History

University of Virginia Library

PO Box 400113

Charlottesville VA 22904-4113

434.924.3021

fax: 434.924.1431

All Art and Art History Databases

Art Index  1929-present

indexes articles and art reproductions in all arts media from selected art periodicals published since 1929. The index is divided into two parts, Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984) and Art Index Full Text (1984-present). Actual full text coverage begins in 1997.

ArtBibModern  1960-present

Abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, PhD dissertations, and exhibition reviews on all forms of modern and contemporary art published since the late 1960s.

artlibraries.net : the Virtual Catalogue of Art History

A European specialized meta catalogue allowing the integrated retrieval of bibliographic records and, should the occasion arise, other objects of distinctive art historical databases. Currently, artlibraries.net gives access to about 6 million records (as of January 2007), including a high percentage of records for articles in periodicals, conference papers, festschriften, exhibition catalogues and exhibition books, etc.

ARTstor

A non-profit initiative, founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields. The Collection is a repository of hundreds of thousands of digital images and related data along with the tools to actively use those images.

Bibliography of the History of Art: BHA    1973-present

Indexes and abstracts periodicals, catalogs, essays, etc.; subjects include all aspects of the visual arts, architecture, and design in the post-Classical western world. Includes book reviews.

DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index  1973-present

indexes over 130,000 annotated references from more than 500 design and craft journals and newspapers.

Google Scholar   

Find articles from most online scholarly journals plus some books and Web sites. Note that some publishers (e.g. Elsevier - UVa gets almost 2000 of their journals) and most aggregators (e.g., InfoTrac, Journals@Ovid) do not participate, and of course there are no links to paper-only journals. Use Advanced Search if you get too many results; use Preferences to turn on links to RefWorks.

Grove Art Online  

Access to over 41,000 articles on the arts and cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific as well as links to tens of thousands of images.

Index of Christian Art  

Indexes works of art in 17 different media types, without geographical limitations, produced from "apostolic" times to 1400 A.D.

Oxford Reference Online

Combines the scholarly resources offered by titles in the Oxford Companions series with authoritative, quick-reference coverage of the full subject spectrum. It also provides a wide range of additional material such as maps, illustrations, and timelines.