Guides: History of Art & Architecture: Reference Sources

Databases for Background Research

Reference Research Guide
How to find print and electronic encyclopedias, dictionaries and handbooks in the libraries at Middlebury.

Britannica Academic This link opens in a new window
Academic edition. Search by subject or keyword. In addition to topical essays, timelines, images, and videos, it provides links to full text journal articles and links to related websites.
Gale In Context: Biography This link opens in a new window
600,000+ biographies covering more than 525,000 individuals. Includes 170+ Gale reference titles, periodical information and multimedia content.
Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
A collection of subject-specific encyclopedias published by Gale. Search across the whole collection or narrow your search by subject area or title of reference work.
Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window
Opposing Viewpoints covers current controversies and hot topics. It features viewpoint articles, topic overviews, full-text magazine, academic journal, and newspaper articles, primary source documents, statistics, images and podcasts, and links to Websites.
Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Access and cross-search Oxford’s acclaimed, regularly updated art reference works: the Grove Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Also includes content from the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2nd edition), The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
Over 60,000 biographies, 72 million words, 11,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British history
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.
Oxford Reference Online: Premium This link opens in a new window
General reference resources, including encyclopedias, bilingual dictionaries, chronologies, and maps and illustrations.

Miscellaneous Websites

Archives of American Art
The Smithsonian Institution's collection of roughly 16 million letters, photographs, diaries, oral history interviews, sketches, scrapbooks, business records, and other documents that support the study of the history of the visual arts in America
Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography is an archive and research center located on the University of Arizona campus. Including the archives of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Garry Winogrand, Harry Callahan, and other great 20th-century photographers--over fifty archives in all.
Mapping Gothic France
With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France invites you to explore the parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions: Space, time, narrative.