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Murphy Art and Architecture Library

Images

  • AICT: Art Images for College Teaching

    Developed by Allan T. Kohl, a Visual Resources Librarian at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the images have been photographed on location by the author, who consents to their use in any application that is both educational and non-commercial in nature. Collection emphasis is on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.
  • AllTheWeb Picture Search / FAST

    AllTheWeb was launched in 1999 and is used as a public showcase for the commercial 'FAST' search engine. It is known for its wide coverage and good relevancy ranking.
  • AltaVista and AltaVista Image Search

    Established in 1995, AltaVista is one of the oldest search engines and was for many years the best. In the late nineties it put all its energy into developing wider portal services and its search facilities suffered. It was overtaken, first by Google and then AllTheWeb, and is now struggling to make a comeback.
  • AP Images

    A licensed database available to KU faculty and students. Contains over one million of the Associated Press's images dating back to 1826 along with tens of thousands of graphics, audio files dating from the 1920's, and news stories dating from 1997. New content is added constantly to news photographs, audio sound bites, and graphics spanning 180 years of history. Simple keyword searching or more complex searches such as concept, color, and category.
  • Art Resource

    A stock photo archive containing over 100,000 keyword-searchable fine art images, cross-referenced by subject, title, artist, period, place, and medium. Offers a range of material from prehistoric times to the present.
  • ARTstor

    Provides more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Available features include: searching, browsing, & organizing images; adding images; presenting images; and integrating with courseware. For detailed information about content and usage, please click here. For professor account details, contact Library EAID eaid@ku.edu.
  • Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record

    Documents achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies. With more than 350,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 35,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century.
  • Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance

    This multi-tiered database has more than 20,000 Renaissance Documents (inventories, guide books, lives of artists, archival documents, etc.) related to more than 10,000 Antique Monuments (sculptures, architecture, vases, etc.) that are accompanied by 30,000 photographs or illustrations. The collection of images includes: drawings, sketchbooks, paintings, engravings, sculpture, medals, applied arts, etc. The database can be utilized for its collection of images, but more extensive information is provided in the database. Monuments, their preservation history, provenance history, and other relevant information are accompanied by bibliographic citations.
  • Cities/Buildings Database

    A collection of over 5000 digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, available to students, researchers and educators on the web. The images have been scanned from original slides or drawn from documents in the public domain. Researchers can search for buildings by country, city, style, title, architect, date of construction, as well as other fields.
  • Copyright and Image Management

    A 2002 document prepared by Georgia Harper, Office of General Counsel at the University of Texas, outlining some of the legal issues regarding image copyright and fair use.
  • Digital Archive of American Architecture

    1,500 digitized images of American architecture (280 buildings) plus explanatory material posted by Prof. Jeffery Howe of Boston College.
  • Digital Archive of European Architecture

    Digitized images of Prehistoric through 20th century European architecture posted by Prof. Jeffery Howe of Boston College.
  • Digital Images Collections Guide

    Digital Images Collections Guide, compiled by Scott Spicer. Directory to digital image collections organized into 85 subject categories with descriptions and links to the various collections. Most, but not all, of the collections are freely available for searching.
  • Digital Imaging Project

    More than 12,000 art historical images of sculpture and architecture from pre-historic to post-modern posted by Mary Ann Sullivan of Bluffton University.
  • Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture

    Collects and creates electronic resources for study and research of the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. Included are electronic texts and journals, image databases, and information on organizations, museums and research facilities. Made possible by the Chipstone Foundation, the site was created and is maintained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
  • Finding Images on the Web

    A tutorial offered through Networked Information Services, Office of Information Technology, Boston University.
  • 40 Centuries of Architecture

    Includes images plus periods, localities, and subject indexes for Egyptian, Greek, Islamic, Romanesque, Roman, Gothic, and Byzantine Architecture. Also an introduction, map, and index for Armenian Architecture.
  • Google and Google Image Search

    Google is the favorite search engine of search experts and general Web users. Since it went public in 1998, it has concentrated on providing the best search facilities, resisting the temptation to become a portal, the downfall of its rivals. It currently vies with AllTheWeb for the widest coverage and best relevancy. Claims to be the most comprehensive image search on the web.
  • GreatBuildings.com: The Great Buildings Collection

    This gateway to architecture around the world and across history documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds.
  • Image Collections and Online Art

    Directory of image websites compiled by Pat Young at the University of Michigan.
  • International Center of Medieval Art

    Listings of image resources on Medieval art and architecture, including links to digital images, compiled by the International Center for Medieval Art and organized by general, by subject, and by location. Includes manuscripts as well as corpus projects.
  • KU Art History Image Catalog

    Licensed for the KU staff, students and faculty; also available to anyone using a public workstation within the KU Libraries. This database with a searchable catalog contains 28,000 images of works of art and architecture. Some works are shown in only one image; others have two or more, usually showing different views (e.g., of a sculpture or a building) or one or more details. All images are licensed perpetually from Saskia, Ltd.
  • LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

    Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
  • Lycos and Lycos Multimedia Search

    Lycos was launched in 1994. In 1999 it stopped doing its own indexing and began using FAST's Web index, so in theory it has the same coverage and relevancy as AllTheWeb. However, its picture search returns quite different results from AllTheWeb's. This is because Lycos has entered commercial partnership with Getty and always presents Getty's images first in any search results. Includes audio and video clips as well as still images.
  • NYPL Digital Gallery

    Over 450,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
  • Oxford Art Online

    Licensed for the KU staff, students and faculty; also available to anyone using a public workstation within the KU Libraries. Includes over 45,000 articles, cross references within the text, and extensive links to art images in galleries and museums around the world. Articles are written and signed by scholars and include bibliographic references. Topics include archaeology, architecture, art, design, costume, landscape design, and photography from all world cultures and all time periods will find this an invaluable resource. Easy to use for the novice but with in-depth searching options for the more experienced researcher.
  • Photomuse, a Resource for Scholarship in the History of Photography

    A collaboration between the George Eastman House and the International Center for Photography, Photomuse provides online resources for the study of an important cultural subject: photography at work in the world.
  • RIBApix

    A growing database dedicated to providing exceptional and unique images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world’s most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture. RIBApix covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts. Many of the images are also of social documentary importance. Searching can be done in several ways: through a Quick search box for simple free–text searches; using Browse to access the entire collection; or for more structured searching by categories such as architect and building you should use Advanced search or Subject search.
  • Society of Architectural Historians: Image Exchange

    SAH members are asked to contribute their own slides of buildings to be scanned at a consistent standard, and made available freely to members and students over the Web for non-profit educational use. Two sets have developed. A world survey set of digital images divided into Part I: Ancient through Medieval, plus early non-Europe and Part II: Renaissance through Modern.
  • SPIRO: Architecture Slide Library, Berkeley

    The visual online public access catalog to the 35mm slide collection of the Architecture Visual Resources Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The collection numbers over 250,000 slides and 20,000 photographs. Searchable fields include Personal or Group Name, Building or Object Title, Location, and Subject or Object Type. Includes more than 63,000 records linked to thumbnail size images.
  • 1200 Years of Italian Sculpture

    Searchable by artist, locality or time periods such as Romanesque and Early Middle Ages, Gothic, Renissance, Baroque, or Modern. In Italian and English.
  • UPDIG: Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines

    Guidelines and best practices documents aiming to clarify issues affecting accurate reproduction and management of digital image files.
  • Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)

    A British resource supplying digital resources for research, teaching and learning in the arts and humanities. One area of emphasis is the Visual Arts with over 30 image collections that can be searched either simultaneously or individually with keywords. Among the databases is the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive.
  • WebMuseum Paris

    Developed by Nicolas Pioch in 1994, the WebMuseum includes a Famous Artists section that includes biographical and visuals for nearly 200 artists, a Themes index, a tour of Paris, and other features.
  • World Art Treasures

    100,000 slides belonging to the Jacque-Edouard Berger Foundation, all of them devoted to art, and including the main civilizations, such as Egypt, China, Japan, India, Europe, its purpose is to offer a different approach to art through Internet. Images are searchable by artist, by country-region-city, or by period.
  • worldvisitguide

    The site includes images from museums, memorials, and places worldwide. Includes 27,446 works in 76,196 photographs.