Research Guides: Art & Design: Databases

Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Gateway to Oxford’s art reference works, including the regularly updated Grove® Dictionary of Art & the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Includes articles that span ancient to contemporary art & architecture, as well as images of works of art, structures, plans & artist signatures.
Subscription is for 3 simultaneous users.

E-books

A&AePortal This link opens in a new window
An interactive, full-text eBook platform that features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, design, & photography. Out-of-print titles & recent releases from academic & museum publishers, & peer-reviewed, born-digital content is also available. Includes fullt-text searching of eBooks, searching for images, & the ability for instructors to create coursepacks.
Interaction of Color This link opens in a new window
An account is required to view the content. Users can access the site using their existing A&AePortal credentials or create a new account.

Offers an entirely new way for users to experience Josef Albers’ original masterwork. The website incorporates interactive features that help students understand the book’s fundamental concepts, study the plates, & experiment with their own designs. Learn more about this database.

Art Magazines

Art Magazine Collection Archives This link opens in a new window
Indexing & full text (including covers & advertisements) for Magazine Antiques (1922-2016), ARTnews (1902-2006) & Art in America (1913-2015). Provides a history of collecting over the course of the 20th century, as well as a comprehensive record of fine arts, art history, interior design, decorative arts, & architecture. (Coverage: 20th - early 21st centuries)

Primary Database for Art Research

Art Abstracts/Art Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
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Indexing, abstracts & citations for hundreds of periodicals on art, art history & related disciplines. (Coverage: Abstracts, 1984 -- | Indexes, 1929-1984)
Subjects include art history & criticism, architecture & architectural history, archaeology, antiques, museum studies, graphic arts, industrial design, landscape architecture, interior design, folk art, painting, photography, pottery, sculpture, decorative arts, costume design, television & video, motion pictures, advertising art, non-western art, textiles, & related fields.

Related Databases for Art Research

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
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Partial Open Access. Search engine specifically for scholarly publications. You can access the full-text of articles from open access & preprint publications, but you must be logged in to your UDel email account in order to access subscriptions provided by the UD Library.
Google Scholar is only one of many ways to identify & access scholarly publications. Consult the Databases page or the Electronic Journalspage for other possibilities.
Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
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A premier source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from scholarly journals & other authoritative sources. Also includes thousands of podcasts & transcripts from NPR & CNN, as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. (Coverage: 1980 --)
America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
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Index of scholarly literature covering the history & culture of the U.S. & Canada, from prehistory to the present.
Provides indexing of academic journals dating back to 1954, with some coverage for titles back to the early 20th century.
Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window
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Compilation of the Anthropological Index Online & Anthropological Literature databases. An extensive index of bibliographic materials covering the fields of anthropology, archaeology, & related interdisciplinary research. (Coverage: late 19th c. --)
FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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Covers hundreds of academic & popular film journals. Contains comprehensive television periodical indexing until 2000. TV-related articles from film periodicals continue to be indexed. (Coverage: 1972 --) See below for information about silent era film archives.
Also included is the Treasures from Film Archives dataset; a database containing credits & holdings information about the silent-era film holdings of film archives from around the world. It is conceived as a tool to aid the work of preservation & scholarly research, & provides brief identification information on over 40,500 works. Most records in this database describe films made before 1929, but there are also records for a few silent works produced during the sound era.
Philosophers Index This link opens in a new window
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Bliographic database covering scholarly research in all major fields of philosophy. (Coverage: 1940 --)
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
The world's most comprehensive curated collection of multi-disciplinary dissertations & theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations and 3 million full-text works from thousands of universities.
APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
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Citations & abstracts of peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science, mental health & related disciplines. (Coverage: 1806 --)
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Indexes the international literature of sociology & related disciplines in the social & behavioral sciences. (Coverage: 1952 --)
Can also be searched as part Social Services Abstracts.