Library Guides: Art History: Guide to online resources during COVID-19

ebooks

Below is a sampling of publications available online. Some publications are also discoverable from the UC Library Search portal. You can also view our general guide on finding eBooks at Berkeley.

To narrow your search results to ebooks in the UC Library Search portal, use the 'refine your results' filter menu on the left. Filter by 'available online' and 'resource type' 'books' and click 'apply filter':

Berkeley eBook packages:

ACLS Humanities E-Book Project

Overdrive ebooks and audiobooks (read more here)

Project Muse

ProQuest Ebook Central

Springer Electronic Book Package (read more here)

UC Press E-Books Collection (eScholarship Editions)

Yale Art & Architecture ePortal

Other Portals for Accessing eBooks:

Getty Research Portal

Google Books

Internet Archive (register for an account to 'check out' books)

Open Access Museum Publications:

Art Institute of Chicago Publications

Detroit Institute of Arts

Getty Museum Publications

Guggenheim Publications

LACMA Publications

Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications

Museum of Modern Art, NY Publications

National Gallery of Art Publications

Smithsonian Books Online

Wildenstein Institute Publications

List of other vendor free access during COVID-19:

https://tinyurl.com/vendorsupportedaccess

Finding eBooks at Berkeley

Finding Library-Licensed eBooks

The Library buys and subscribes to both individual eBook titles and collections of eBooks available to campus-affiliated users and members of the public using public-access computers in the Library. Those eBooks appear on various platforms--such as Springer, eBook Central, EBSCO eBooks, and Safari--but you can find eBook titles using the Library's main search tools:

UC Library Search is the University of California's unified discovery and borrowing system.
Browse our full list of eBook databases. If you want to search for eBooks in a specific discipline, or those published in a particular time period or place, you might want to search a specific eBook database directly.

Downloading eBooks

Campus-affiliated users and members of the public on library public-access computers can often download some version or portion of library-licensed eBooks, but access varies by platform*. Those users can almost always read the entire book online, and can often download single chapters or a limited number of pages. Sometimes users can download an entire book without restrictions, and other times you can "check out" the eBook for a limited period of time (though the latter may be limited to campus-affiliated users). Many eBook platforms offer PDF downloads, and others require the use of free eBook viewing/reading software.

Use the tabs above to explore how to access eBook content from a few popular platforms. The following platforms offer full downloads (check-outs) of at least some eBooks in their collections:

* Off-campus access to library-licensed eBooks, like other online library resources, is not available to members of the public. More information on who is eligible to use the proxy server.

Online Databases

Berkeley subscribes to many databases with online journal content. You can find a full list of the Berkeley databases at the A-Z database list. Below are a few of the recommended databases for Art History research.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A multi-disciplinary database of scholarly and general interest journals, books, and reports. [1865 - present]

Articles from broad array of peer-reviewed journals, popular and trade magazines and news sources for nearly all areas of study; available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Art & Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
Covers 750 art journals including 470 peer reviewed journals, dissertations, reviews, and over 200 books related to art and architecture topics. Includes coverage from 1929 to present, including the complete former contents of Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective databases. Some full text.

Formerly titled Art Source or Art Full Text
ARTbibliographies Modern (ABM) This link opens in a new window
Abstracts of the current literature of modern and contemporary art, photography and design. [1974 - present]

Indexes journals, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews. Coverage extends from artists and movements beginning with Impressionism in the late 19th century, up to the most recent works and trends in the late 20th century. Photography is covered from its invention in 1839 to the present.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Indexes scholarly and professional journals covering architecture, architectural design, environmental design, furniture and decoration, interior design, historic preservation, history of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. [1860s - present]

Can limit to articles containing plans, sections, elevations and other graphic attributes. Most citations are from articles published since 1930 (with selective coverage dating back to the 1860s).
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Search across many disciplines and sources including articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.

Lists journal articles, books, preprints, and technical reports in many subject areas (though more specialized article databases may cover any given field more completely). Can be used with "Get it at UC" to access the full text of many articles.

Setting Google Scholar for UC Content

International Bibliography of Art (IBA) This link opens in a new window
A successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). (2008 - present)

This database covers international scholarship in European art from late antiquity to the present, American art from the colonial era to the present, and global art since 1945. Visual arts in all media are covered: painting, sculpture, drawing, video, installations, new media, decorative and applied arts, museum studies and conservation, archaeology, folk art and material culture, classical studies, antiques, architectural history. Over 500 core journals are indexed, as well as monographs, essays, conference proceedings, and exhibition catalogs.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to over 1000 scholarly journals, including more than 2 million articles, from a wide range of disciplines. Current issues from journals (the most recent 3-5 years) are generally not available in JSTOR. [dates vary].

For more sophisticated search capabilities, go directly to JSTOR advanced search.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) This link opens in a new window
Index and full text of graduate dissertations and theses from North American and European schools and universities, including the University of California. (Dissertations & Theses - Proquest Digital Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) - Dissertation Abstracts - ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global) [1861 - present]

Indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities. Dissertations published since 1980, and master's theses since 1988, include brief abstracts written by the authors. Offers full text of most of the dissertations added since 1997 . It is possible to search a subset of dissertations produced by UC students by going to Dissertations and Theses @ University of California (available in full text).

Teaching Resources and Tips

Annenberg Learner

Art History Resources at SmartHistory

Art History Teaching Resource (AHTR)

Art Institute of Chicago Educator Resources

College Art Association List of Resources for Teaching Remotely

Khan Academy Art History Resources

MCN: The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections

Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

MoMA: Art Resources for
Teaching and Learning from Home

MoMA Free Online Courses

Online Teaching in the Context of COVID-19

Oxford University Press Free Teaching Resources During COVID-19

Teaching Art Online Under COVID-19

Film and Video

Art & Architecture in Video
- This link opens in a new window
Over 600 streaming videos on art and architecture by BBC Worldwide, A&E Network, ArtHaus Musik, Landmark Media, and Filmmakers Library, among others.

BBC Landmark Video Collection This link opens in a new window
BBC documentaries on the natural world, including series such as Planet Earth, Life, and Blue Planet.

Heni Talks
"Stories of art from the world's leading experts"

Independent World Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Film This link opens in a new window
Includes over 400 documentary and feature films from select American distributors of independent and international film, including Milestone Films, Zeitgeist Films, Pragda, and Oscilloscope.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video service which provides access to more than 26,000 films, including titles from PBS, BBC, Criterion Collection, Media Education Foundation and more.
Socialism on film This link opens in a new window
This collection of films reveals war, history, current affairs, culture, and society, as seen through the socialist lens. It covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, and Cuba. [1917-1989]

Sourced from the archives of the British Film Institute (BFI), Socialism on Film documents the communist world from the Russian Revolution through to the late 1980s. The digitized films cover all aspects of the socialist experience from everyday life and society to culture, the Cold War, memory and current affairs. Geographically the films deal with the Soviet Union alongside groupings of material on Vietnam, China, Korea, the German Democratic Republic, and Eastern Europe, Britain, Spain, Latin America, and Cuba.
Ubuweb This link opens in a new window
UbuWeb is an open-access educational resource for avant-garde material founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, streaming videos, oral histories, and sound art archives.

Secondary menu

Art History: Guide to online resources during COVID-19

Introduction