Art History: Find Books
Online Catalogs
Locate books not owned by Fondren Library, search this online catalog with holdings of over 16,000 libraries worldwide. Bibliographic records have a link to Rice ILL Request (ILLiad). Information transfers from WorldCat to the request form.
Request a book or journal article from another library, fill out the form on the Library's Document Delivery website. This free service is availabe to Rice students, faculty, and staff only. If Fondren does not offer online access to an older journal which is housed in the Library Service Center, Rice students, faculty, and staff only may request a PDF copy of articles or chapters of a book up to 50 pages if housed in the Library Service Center (LSC). Use ILLiad to request PDF service.
Collection strengths reflect those of the museum's permanent collection: Modern (Surrealism) and contemporary art; Byzantine and Medieval periods; classical antiquities, African art.
Collection is strongest in areas in which the Museum has collected; ie: African, Pre-Columbian art; photography; European and American drawing, painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and costume. Hirsch Library has an extensive collection of artists files, auction and commercial gallery catalogues. The Library's online catalog includes records for Kitty King Powell Library collection.
Kitty King Powell Library & Study Center
A branch of the Hirsch Library, the Kitty King Powell Library at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens provides resources for the study of American art and decorative arts of the 17th through the 19th century. The specialized collection includes more than 6,000 books, periodical volumes, auction catalogues on the history of American material culture, including furniture, ceramics, metals, glass, and textiles.
See also Library & Museum Websites folder.
Digital Text and Ebook Collections
- Art & Architecture ePortal This link opens in a new windowThis database "features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and design. With innovative functionality and extensive metadata, the site includes many out-of-print titles, key backlist, and recent releases from some of the world’s finest academic and museum publishers (Yale University Press)."
The Getty Research Portal is an online search platform providing global access to digitized art history texts in the public domain. Through this multilingual, multicultural union catalog, scholars can search and dowload complete digital copies of publications for the study of art, architecture, material culture, and related fields. Because of copyright restrictions, all content on the Portal will be limited to works published before 1923 which are considered part of the public domain. Free access.
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. Over 2,000,000 digitized books and manuscripts. See http://archive.org/about/credits.php#prelinger for list of sponsors such as the National Science Foundation, LIbrary of Congress.
Microform Collections
- Nineteenth Century: Visual Arts & Architecture Collection Gov N25 .N56
Collection of 2,445 titles on ca. 10,000 monochrome and color microfiche of English language books published 1800-1900 from the British Library collection. Bibliographic records appear in Fondren Library's online catalog: author, titles entries, but no subject entries. This Specialist Collection is a subset of the Nineteenth Century Microfiche Project to which Fondren subscribes. Nineteenth Century: General Collection (Gov CB415 .N56) includes books on archaeology, fanmily life, geography, history, medicine, philosophy, politics, recreation, religion, science, and technology. Nineteenth Century project is the most important source for research for the nineteenth century studies. The Nineteenth Century Collection contains 34,000+ titles.
- C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new windowC19 Index database provides integrated (or individual) searching of the following online indexes: Books: Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, Nineteenth Century Microfice Project; Periodicals: American Periodicals Series, British Periodicals, Periodicals Index Online, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900; Offical Publications: House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Proceedings of the Old Bailey, U.S. Congressional Serial Set; Archives: Archive Finder; Newspapers: Palmer's Index to the Times; Reference: Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism.