A-Z Databases

This database is a collection of early periodicals, primarily from North America, focusing on many topics, including colonial life leading up to the American Revolution, antebellum period industrialization and western expansion, Civil War and Reconstruction era conflicts and aftermath, immigration, women's rights, and World War I. Coverage: 1681-1923.

This database includes the Final State Reports produced by the State Administration to record the achievements of the specific state WPA projects. The reports summarize the range of activities that took place in each state, problems faced, administrative, financial and organizational aspects of the state projects, and factual data on persons employed.

This database of the papers of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) illustrates many of the issues tackled in the arts, professional activities and public administration. The individual Project Reports for each state describe the breadth of the programs the Federal Government funded, including the Music Program, the Writers' Project, the Adult Education Program, the Workers Service Program, the Feeding Program, the Health Program, among others.

In addition to the news, the Art Newspaper publishes reviews and commentary by major players in the art scene. This resource requires a password. Log in to MyAthens to see it listed in the Passwords Required box.

Magazine featuring artists’ projects, reviews, and critical essays on contemporary visual culture including coverage of film, music, architecture, performance, and media; it contains an archive of issues from 2020 to present. This resource requires a login. Log in to MyAthens to find information about access.

Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art (BASIRA) is an open-access database hosted by the University of Pennsylvania that features representations of books and other textual documents in the figurative arts between approximately 1300 and 1600 CE, the period encompassing the advent of print culture in Europe and its neighboring regions. Many aspects of a book’s depiction can be searched, including details of its binding, bookmarks, contents, and position.

The Digital Art History Directory (DAHD) is an open-access publication containing a database of digital art history projects and information on data sources, best practices in Digital Art History project construction, preservation, and web archiving. Intended to be the largest, most comprehensive, and inclusive collection of information on Digital Art History and to function as a tool and living resource, rather than a static publication, the DAHD provides a platform for discovery, sharing, and research of Digital Art History.

Access over 800,000 ebooks from this multidisciplinary collection.

Database focused on centering and amplifying BIPOC fashion scholarship, illuminating under-examined histories and addressing racism throughout the fashion system. This resource requires a password. Log in to MyAthens to find information about access.

The Manuscript Division has recently released the Shippen Family Papers, a collection of 6,500 items (15,666 images) digitized from 15 reels of previously produced microfilm, which document this wealthy and powerful group of Philadelphians connected by blood and marriage who reached the height of their influence in the mid-eighteenth century. The Shippens were merchants, doctors, lawyers, and landowners, who held offices in Pennsylvania’s colonial government and were connected by marriage to other influential colonial families, including the Livingstons of New York and the Lees of Virginia. The papers chiefly concern the family of William Shippen Jr. and consist of correspondence, diaries, account books, estate papers, and business, financial, and real estate papers, including maps and deeds. They reflect the family’s experiences during the Revolutionary War, their participation in the Philadelphia social circle that surrounded George Washington during his presidency, and the family’s engagement with national politics. The collection is notable for its documentation of the lives of women family members through diaries, letters, and such ephemera as embroidery patterns.

A selection of University of Chicago Press journals, including American Art, Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, Source: Notes in the History of Art, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts Design History and Material Culture, and I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance.

This database serves as the largest open digital archive for Modernist residential US design and major US architecture magazines. Includes the Architect and House Archives featuring nearly every house by every major architect, built and unbuilt, and the Architecture Magazine Library featuring over 21,000 issues of 20th-century architecture magazines.

The Internet Archive Collection contains microfilm of issues published between 1892 and 2016.

WikiArt already features some 250.000 artworks by 3.000 artists, localized on 8 languages. These artworks are in museums, universities, town halls, and other civic buildings of more than 100 countries. WikiArt presents both public domain and copyright protected artworks. The latter are showcased in accordance with fair use.