Museum Studies: Databases
Arts and General Databases
- ARTstor Digital Library This link opens in a new windowover 1.5 million digital images in arts, architecture, humanities & sciences, from international museums, photographers, libraries, photo archives, artists, etc. Also has relevance to anthropology, classics, history, literature, music, religion.
- CREDO Reference This link opens in a new windowoffers over 650 major reference books - dictionaries, encyclopaedias, thesauri, biographies, books of quotations, atlases and quick reference works on every subject
- ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new windowThe largest database of English literature and criticism with over 340,000 full-text works of poetry, prose and drama in English. Our subscription also includes access to the MLA International Bibliography - which has references to articles in modern languages and literatures, linguistics, and folklore.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowA large abstracting and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature. Covers over 19,000 journal titles.
- Library search This link opens in a new windowa single access point to many of the Library's e-resources - databases, e-journals, e-books and print books.
- Worldcat This link opens in a new windowAvailable via OCLC First Search. OCLCs catalogue of books available in Libraries worldwide.
- Worldcat (Free version) This link opens in a new windowA free version of Worldcat - connecting you to the collections of over 10,000 Libraries across the world, contains over 2 billion records. Works both on and off-campus
For a complete list of all available databases uses the A-Z Databases guide.
Library's Photographic Collection
RMA-H5629[X] Interior of black house (the dwelling of the weaver, Mr McInnes), Scarp (Scarpa), west Harris. Image from the Library Photographic Archive
Specialist Databases
- Artists of the World (Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon) This link opens in a new window"The Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon (AKL), [Artists of the World], is the successor to the traditional Thieme-Becker and Vollmer standard reference works on art history. It has been published since 1991. Long a standard work in its own right, the AKL is intentionally not limited to the “grand masters”, but includes artists from all over the world and throughout the ages from antiquity to the present. It not only contains painters, sculptors and graphic designers, but gives equal weight to architects, designers, photographers, calligraphers, craftsmen and many other artistic professions. Around 1,500 artist biographies are contained in each volume." (Publisher's description)
- ARTstor Digital Library This link opens in a new windowover 1.5 million digital images in arts, architecture, humanities & sciences, from international museums, photographers, libraries, photo archives, artists, etc. Also has relevance to anthropology, classics, history, literature, music, religion.
- BFI Player This link opens in a new windowOver 11,000 archive films from the British Film Institute's national and regional archives.
- Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) and Répertoire de la litterature de l'art (RILA) This link opens in a new windowCovers fine arts - painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, and architecture—as well as decorative and applied arts—crafts, graphic arts, folk, and popular art. Indexes and abstracts art-related books and articles from more than 2,500 of periodicals, conference proceedings, theses, and exhibition and dealers' catalogues in many languages. Covers items published between 1975 and 2007
- Bridgeman Art LibraryFounded in 1972, the Bridgeman Art Library works with museums, art galleries and artists to make the best art available for reproduction. The result is an outstanding archive of images drawn from collections throughout the world. Every subject, concept, style and medium is represented, from the masterpieces of national museums to the hidden treasures of private collections. Fine art is just one of the sources of images; design, antiques, maps, architecture, furniture, glass, ceramics, anthropological artefacts and many others also feature in the collection. The Bridgeman Art Library Archive represents a large part of the complete collection, chosen for its suitability for web use. A considerable number of individual works of art are featured here. Part of Credo reference.
- Box of Broadcasts This link opens in a new windowBoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education; Users can record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels and an extensive archive of tv and radio broadcasts. You can create and share playlists and clips. NB: BoB is NOT AVAILABLE outside the UK.
- British Cartoon Archive This link opens in a new windownational collection of over 150,000 British social and political cartoons, the work of over 250 British cartoonists, held at the University of Kent; includes 15,000 cartoons from the Carl Giles Archive, which includes rare seaside postcards as well as political cartoons
- British Library Sounds This link opens in a new windowHolds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs and thousands of tapes. Its collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound from music, drama and literature, to oral history and wildlife sounds. In addition to copies of commercial recordings issued within the United Kingdom, the Sound Archive keeps selected commercial recordings from overseas, radio broadcasts and many privately-made recordings.
- Burney Collection This link opens in a new windowlarge collection of 17th and 18th century mostly English news media - over 1,270 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers - gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817).
- The First World War Poetry Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowfreely available online repository of over 7,000 text, image, audio, and video items for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired. Includes important primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas
- Illustrated London News: Historical Archive 1842-2003 This link opens in a new windowThe Illustrated London News Historical Archive gives students and researchers unprecedented online access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. Each page has been digitally reproduced in full colour and every article and caption is full-text searchable with hit-term highlighting and links to corresponding illustrations. Facsimilies of articles and illustrations can be viewed, printed and saved either individually or in the context of the page in which they appear. Wherever possible Special Numbers covering special events such as coronations or royal funerals have been included. (Publishers' description)
- ImageQuest This link opens in a new windowMillions of rights-cleared images that can be used by University students and staff for educational purposes. (Please credit photos with Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest and the date retrieved.)
- Index of Medieval Art This link opens in a new windowPrinceton's collectRecords works of art from early apostolic times to AD1550. It has an emphasis on the western world, but also includes material on Coptic Egypt, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Syria, Armenia and the Near East.
- The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera This link opens in a new windowFully searchable colour images of 65,000 items from the Bodleian Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries.
- Library Photographic Archive.This website offers you access to the amazing wealth of photography held within the Special Collections Department of the University of St Andrews Library. Here you will find masterpieces of very early photography from one of the world’s outstanding collections, as well as thousands of images taken by masters of the art, both professional and amateur, over the last century and a half.
- Mass Observation OnlineCovers the social and cultural history of Britain from 1937-1965, through interviews, conversations, surveys, diaries, etc.
- NAXOS Music LibraryNaxos Music Library is the world´s largest online classical music library. Currently, it offers streaming access to more than 77,290 CDs with more than 1,111,800 tracks, standard and rare repertoire. Over 800 new CDs are added to the library every month.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowsearchable full-text primary sources for the 'long' 19th century (1789-1914). Collections include: British Politics and Society, European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; and British Theatre, Music,and Literature: High and Popular Culture
- Old Maps Online This link opens in a new windowa free portal giving access to over 400,000 historical maps in libraries around the world
- Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new windowProvides fully searchable web access to the entire text of 'The Dictionary of Art', ed. Jane Turner (1996, 34 vols.) and 'The Oxford Companion to Western Art', ed. Hugh Brigstocke (2001). It is constantly updated and contains 45,000 articles on every aspect of the visual arts – painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, decorative arts and photography – from prehistory to the present day. Includes links to searchable image databases and editorially selected links to over 40,000 art images on museum and gallery web sites around the world.
- Picture Post Historical Archive This link opens in a new windowunique archive of the complete Picture Post, the pioneering illustrated newspaper published in Britain between 1938-1957, and containing thousands of images
- Rock's backpages This link opens in a new windowRock and Roll library. Provides over 22,000 searchable, full-text articles, interviews and reviews from the world's best music writers and critics, from the late 1950s to the present day. Also includes MP3 audio files of original artist interviews. Updated weekly
- SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) This link opens in a new windowScran is a Scottish charity & online learning resource base with over 360,000 images & media from museums, galleries, archives and the media.
- University of St Andrews Image Database This link opens in a new windowa collection of images 'primarily intended to support research and teaching purposes within the University'. Includes the extensive Art History Slide Collection, and the Corpus of Scottish medieval parish churches
- Visualising China This link opens in a new windowmore than 8,000 rare photographs of Chinese life, between 1850-1950
- Vogue Archive This link opens in a new windowcomplete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current issue