Art & Image Resources Available Through Subscription Databases

The following subscription databases house art and image resources.  There may be others as well, but these are those that are available in the college library at which I am currently employed.  I decided to include this list here because I discovered that my web-guide on this topic was not available when I went to it and I thought it was lost.  Now that it is available again, I thought I should have some back-up of this information.  Art and image resources available through the web have been listed on this blog earlier.  You cannot access the databases here without a paid subscription.

Art Full Text (Wilson): For reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals. Covers folk art, Non-Western Art, Painting, Photography, Pottery, and Sculpture, among other subjects.

Art Museum Image Gallery (Wilson):  Drawing on the collections of distinguished museums around the world, the content of Art Museum Image Gallery is rights-cleared for use in educational settings, so they can be employed liberally in class lectures, assignments, and academic presentations.

ArtStor: Offers hundreds of thousands of images from all eras and cultures. Click on the orange “Go” button to begin searching. Enter your search term and double click on any image that interests you in order to enlarge it.

Berg Fashion Library:  This is the first online resource to provide access to interdisciplinary and integrated text, image, and journal content on world dress and fashion and will be useful to anyone researching or studying fashion, anthropology, art history, history, museum studies, and cultural studies.

The Canadian Reference Centre (EBSCO): Do a basic search. Type in what you’re looking for (for example, ferns), then limit your search by selecting one of the following: black and white photograph; color photograph; diagram, or; illustration. Double click on the image that looks interesting to you in order to enlarge it.

Cinema Image Gallery:  This unique database features an unparalleled range of pictures, posters, video clips, and other material from around the world of film and television from the late 19th century to the present day.

Electric Library (Proquest): Do a Basic Search. Enter your search term and de-select all categories except pictures.

Grove Dictionary of Art Online:  Has images of artistic works including paintings, sculptures, carvings, architecture, and even antiques. Click on “images”, and search through the alphabetical listing or enter your search term and click search. This database is best used to find images of the works of the great masters. Just enter their last name as your search term.

Humanities International Complete : Do a basic search.  You can limit your search to bring back results that include images. You can further limit your results to maps, colour or black and white photos, diagrams etc..

Art and Image Resources Available on the Web

The following is a list of art and image resources available on the web.  I originally compiled this list for use as part of a pathfinder for Sheridan College.  The pathfinder also included databases in the Sheridan collection which have been omitted here.  All collections included in this list should be consulted as to the proprietary rights of the images prior to re-publishing the images.

• ArtBabble  Offers videos, interviews, background information on artists and the art world.  Hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and includes material from the Museum of Modern Art and the PBS series “Art:21.”
• Art History Resources on the Web
• Art in Context:  Information about Artists and where to find their work.
• Art on Film Online
• ArtSource  a gathering point for networked resources on art and architecture.
• The Artchive
• The Artcyclopedia:  Over 8,000 painters, sculptors and photographers, at art museum sites & image archives worldwide.
• Art Images for College Teaching  http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict  Images of art and architectural works photographed by the author.
• Artnet
• AskArt:  the American artists bluebook.  Extensive information about more than 32,000 artists (partially accessible for free) .
• Bigfoto & partner sites  www.bigfoto.com  www.free-pictures-photos.com  www.picture-newsletter.com
• Biodidac  http://biodidac.bio.uottawa.ca  Images for teaching biology.
• Botanical Society of America Online Image Collection  http://images.botany.org  Approximately 800 images.
• Centre of Contemporary Canadian Art’s Internet Archive of Professional Artists:  Over 18,000 images of work by contemporary Canadian artists.
• Collections Canada  www.collectionscanada.ca  Content related to Canadian history and culture.
• CyberMuse:  National Gallery of Canada : Over 9,000 images of artworks by Canadian artists, as well as video and audio recordings. Search by keyword, title, artist, nationality, or medium. Note: not all images indexed are available.
  Digital Saskatchewan  http://digitalsask.nesd.ca/index.php  Images, movies and sounds.
• Discovery School Clip Art  http://school.discovery.com/clipart  Includes animations.
• Everystockphoto  www.everystockphoto.com
• Flickr  www.flickr.com  An online photo management and sharing application.
• The Getty Information Institute
• Google Art Project
• Google’s Image Search
• Guggenheim  www.guggenheim.org  Images from collections and shows at Guggenheim museums around the world.
• History of Visual Communication
  Offers a theme-based approach to the history of visual communication using examples from pre-history to the present age.  Anonymously posted, but an excellent creative source for inspiration.
• Images Canada:  Government of Canada, Over 65,000 photographic images, lithographs and reproductions of Canadian subjects.
• Library map collection, University of Texas  www.lib.utexas.edu/maps  Maps of the world.
• Library of Congress  www.loc.gov/index.html  Related to American culture, history, art, etc.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art  www.metmuseum.org
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History
• Microsoft Images  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart  Clip-art, animations and images.
• Museum of Fine Arts Boston  www.mfa.org/collections/index.asp
• The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) www.moma.org
• Museum of Modern Art (MOMA’s DADABASE)
• The Mother-of-All Art & Art History Links Page
• NASA  www.nasa.gov  Content specific to the U.S. space program and related topics.
• New York Public Library Digital Image Collections:  A gateway to The New York Public Library’s rare and unique international holdings in digitized form, including:  historic maps, rare prints and photos, illuminated manuscripts, etc.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collection (NOAA) Photo Library  www.photolib.noaa.gov/search.html
• The National Resources Canada Library (NRCan)  http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/esic/
• NRCS Photo Gallery  http://photogallery.nrcs.usda.gov  Natural resource and conservation related photos from across the USA.
• PicFindr  www.picfindr.com
• Pics4Learning  www.pics4learning.com  Thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.
• Public health image library.  http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/home.asp  A gateway to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pictures.
• Le Quebec en images  www.ccdmd.qc.ca/quebec  Thousands of images of the regions of Quebec.
• School Clip Art  www.school-clip-art.com  Free clip-art for teachers and students.
•  Smithsonian Inititution Research & Information System (SIRIS)
• Stock.SCHNG  www.scx.hu  Intended to be an alternative to expensive stock photography.
• Teachers’ Domain  http://www.teachersdomain.org  Includes images from various areas of the arts.
• UTOPIA portrait gallery  www.lib.utexas.edu/exhibits/portraits/index.html  Portraits of historical figures from the University of Texas library.
• Wikimedia Commons  http://commons.wikimedia.org  A repository created and maintained by volunteers.
• WiseGorilla  www.wisegorilla.com  Clip-art.

Melvin Monster

Another great review found on Boing Boing and written byCory Doctorow.  10/2/09

“Back in February, Mark blogged about the forthcoming Melvin Monster anthology from Drawn and Quarterly, with much anticipation. I’ve just gotten a copy at the direct from the Drawn and Quarterly folks at the Word on the Street event in Toronto and read it in one gulp. What a hoot! Melvin Monster was the creation of John Stanley, one of the principal writers on Little Lulu, Nancy and Sluggo, and others. Melvin is firmly in the Addams Family/St Trinnian’s vein, a macabre and sweet kids’ comic about a monster-boy whose parents (Baddy, a Frankenstein’s monster, and Mummy, a mummy) urge him to do a bad deed every day, make him play with the family’s vicious pet alligator, and demand that he follow in the family tradition of dropping out of school in kindergarten. There’s plenty of two-edged humor in Melvin Monster, stuff that parents will appreciate that might go over the heads of kids who are enjoying the slapstick. The art is fantastic, in a Marc Davis/Haunted Mansion vein, and the reproduced pages have been cleaned up just enough to make them neat without being sterile, some of the newsprint texture remaining in the scans. Seth’s book design, with wonderful tessellated Melvin endpapers and an embossed cover, make for a great package, perfect for a gift or for long-term love on your shelves. “

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Chevalier, Tracy.  Girl with a Pearl Earring.

A coming of age story about Griet, a young maid and assistant to the artist, Vermeer.  Set in 17^th century Holland.  Extremely well written.  Chevalier writes like a semiotician in her description of Vermeer’s paintings and like an artist herself in Griet’s thoughts about art and the artist’s way of seeing.