Art & Architecture Library: Databases

Select Databases

Select list of the top databases for the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. For a full list of architecture, art, and design databases click here.

Art Index Retrospective from EBSCOhost
Art Index Retrospective is an index of over a half-century of historic scholarly literature covering fine, decorative and commercial art. It is the electronic version of the print annual publication Art Index from its first volume, 1929, through 1984. It consists of citations of over 25,000 book reviews and high-quality indexing of nearly 600 publications, many of which are peer-reviewed for the fields of art history, architectural history, and the visual arts.
Artstor
Artstor provides high quality images of visual media like paintings, photographs, architecture, sculpture, decorative arts, and other forms of visual culture. It provides tools to create, manage, and present collections of images. Prehistoric times-present.
Artstor's ever-increasing digital library includes more than 1.9 million high-quality images for education and research from a wide variety of contributors around the world. Dozens of collections from a wide variety of cultures across all major time periods have followed, including a collection of 190,000 old master drawings originally photographed at over 100 different repositories, 20 years of contemporary New York City gallery shows, archives of Islamic textiles, the restored Ghiberti "Gates of Paradise," African masks, medieval manuscripts, images of all exhibitions shown at MoMA, and many others.

Artstor facilitates research and education in numerous disciplines, including art and visual studies, architecture, religion, anthropology and archaeology, global studies, fashion and costume, classics, world history, and more. Our library is solely available for teaching, education and scholarship, with all images supported with comprehensive metadata and cleared for educational use.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals from EBSCOhost
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles in architecture and design from American and international scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, and publications of professional organizations. In addition, this database also provides citation records for architects' obituaries. Full text, when available, is in PDF and HTML. 1800s-present.
DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index from ProQuest
DAAI indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, news reports, and reviews on design and applied arts (including performing arts-related design). You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1973-present.
DETAIL Inspiration
DETAIL provides reports on construction solutions, including photos and architectural plans.
JSTOR
JSTOR is an archive of journals from the humanities, social science, and sciences. It is not a comprehensive index of any of these subjects. Articles are available as PDFs back to volume one for most journals which have a "rolling wall" that excludes content from the last several years of publication. Virginia Tech access includes: JSTOR Arts and Sciences Archive Collections I - XV, Business Archive IV and the following collections:
Life Sciences, Sustainability, Ireland, and Security Studies.
The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references. The content is expanded continuously with a current emphasis on international publications as well as pamphlets, images, and manuscripts from libraries, societies, and museums.
Kanopy Streaming Videos
NOTE: As of Spring 2021 Kanopy made changes to links and access, so proxied links to streaming videos on the platform will no longer work. Please update any links to Kanopy videos in Canvas, syllabi, etc, with the new URLs.

The new base URL is https://vt.kanopy.com with specific videos using the following format: https://vt.kanopy.com/video/seadrift

Kanopy provides hundreds of streaming videos in a wide variety of subjects. For videos outside our collection, you'll be presented a form to request they be added.
Material ConneXion
Material ConneXion provides full-text data on materials used in architecture, interior and industrial design, fashion and apparel, and landscaping. Materials include polymers, ceramics, glass, metals, cements, and natural materials. Processing and sustainability information, physical and usage properties, and manufacturers are listed.
OnArchitecture
OnArchitecture provides videos on architectural subjects: interviews, buildings, and installations.