Course resource help for Fine Art

This list contains details of electronic databases available to Oxford Brookes staff and students on the web. First listed are the databases that allow you to search for references for journal articles and other publications in your subject area. Some databases provide an indexing service only, some also provide abstracts (summaries) and others are full text. For more information on using these services see the How to search catalogues and databases page.

Also listed in this section are databases for:

• specialist information
• reference sources
• newspapers (a source of reviews)
• online archives
• images and
• audio-visual databases.

Note: Databases are usually available on and off-campus. Most will prompt you to log in with your Brookes ID and password. The Library Electronic Resources pages provide details of passwords for resources not covered by this.

Academic Search Complete

Multi-disciplinary database for academic articles, reports and conference proceedings. Full text access to more than 5,800 scholarly publications, including more than 5,350 peer-reviewed journals. Coverage includes art and design journals. EBSCO.

Art Full Text

Full-text of articles from over 300 journals dating back to 1995; also indexing and abstracting of over 600 periodicals and 13,000 art dissertations; and indexing of 200,000 art reproductions providing examples of styles and art movements, including work by emerging artists. A key, comprehensive source for the visual arts covering fine, decorative and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and graphic design. EBSCO.

Communication & Mass Media Complete

Full-text links to over 450 journals and indexing and abstracting for over 770. Covers fields of media studies, film studies, communications, advertising, and new media. Particularly good for journalism, photojournalism and the social aspects of photography. EBSCO.

Performing arts periodicals database

Over a third of a million references to journal articles and reviews on dance, film, musical theatre, opera, performance art, television and theatre. Full text available for about 160 journal titles. A very significant database for the performing arts. ProQuest.

a-n The Artists Information Company

A valuable resource for practising artists. Provides access to research, critical writings, artists' profiles, debates and opportunities in the visual arts as well as a series of open interactive websites.

Bibliography of the History of Art

More art historical in focus, but does cover modern and contemporary art. Indexes articles published between 1975 and 2008.

Oxford Art Online

An encyclopaedia covering the visual arts from prehistory to the present day.

Oxford Reference

200 dictionaries and reference works published by Oxford University Press including dictionaries of art terms, art, artists and design together with the Oxford Companion to the Photograph.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

An illustrated collection of articles providing the life stories of over 65,000 people who have shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to those who died in recent years. Includes artists such as Francis Bacon, Helen Chadwick and Paul Nash.

Lexis+

The News tab of this legal database gives full-text access to regional and national newspapers including the Guardian, Independent,Times and Daily Telegraph. It is an excellent source for reviews, film reviews, and arts news. It does not include images. Click on 'Content' under the search box on the homepage, then choose Newspapers.

Vogue archive

Access to the complete run of US Vogue from 1892 to the most recent edition. Contains over 400,000 pages produced as high resolution full colour images. Searchable by, for example, designer, model, photographer, collection, garment or brand. ProQuest.

Factiva

A multi-use, international news database covering national and regional newspapers, trade  and professional journals, company profiles and share data, and transcripts of world radio broadcasts. Covers 152 countries in 22 languages. Covers US newspapers and entertainment magazines such as Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety; good for film reviews. Includes images from Reuters.

ARTStor

Over 2 million images from collections world-wide. Covers the arts, architecture, humanities and sciences. Includes photos of artworks and art installations. Includes over 92,000 Magnum photographs and many other photographic collections. Now part of JSTOR. Clearing cookies often helps with access issues.

Bridgeman Education

A digital image library covering visual culture of all civilisations and historical periods from pre- historic to the present day.

Box of Broadcasts (BoB)

An online archive giving you access to thousands of recorded radio and TV programmes including films. It allows users to record programmes which will then be stored on the database. Log in when prompted with your Brookes username and password.

The library subscribes to both print and online journals relevant to Fine Art. There are also some open access journals online. Find them in these ways:

• The best way to find individual journal articles, relevant to your topic, from a range of publications is to use a Database, see section above.
• Journals for Visual Arts is an annotated list of the library’s print journals relevant to your subject, and includes some ejournals.
• Browzine is an excellent way to find ejournals in your field and stay-up-to-date with the latest issues.
• LibrarySearch provides details of all the print and ejournals the Library subscribes to. Use the Journal titles tab or filter results to journals.
• See the library’s journal page for more information.
• A number of free online Fine Art journals are listed in the Internet section below.

Find all our books and ebooks using LibrarySearch (the search box on the Library homepage). Search, and then select 'Book' from the filters menu on the left. You can further limit your search to 'eBook' if you want.

You can also:

• Browse newly acquired books for Fine Art and Foundation Art & Design
• Explore Module reading lists: helpful recommendations from your lecturers.

Print books

LibrarySearch shows call numbers so you can find specific books on the shelves. If you'd like to browse, the printable guide at the top of this page gives some helpful call numbers to visit. Art books have numbers in the 700s, and are found on Levels 3 and 4 of the Library. However, many potentially interesting books are found elsewhere in the Library. Titles on aesthetics, philosophy, psychology, and the environment, for example, are found on Levels 2 and 3.

There are maps on each floor in the staircase area showing which call numbers are in which zones. You can also download a library floorplan (PDF).  Oversize books are shelved separately near the book sequence. The Short Loan Collection next to the welcome desk contains books in heavy demand.

See also: How to borrow and return items

E-books

• O'Reilly Safari Learning Platform  : a collection of e-books, videos, tutorials (Learning Paths) and Case Studies on various aspects of information technology. The selection includes desktop publishing, digital media, e-commerce, and programming. O'Reilly titles can also be found via LibrarySearch. Access with Brookes login. 
• EBooks Central :  a collection of academic e-books for a range of subjects. Individual titles appear on LibrarySearch. Access with Brookes login.
• Open Research Library and this list on Project Muse are examples of Open Access e-books, which are becoming increasingly available.

The Library's Ebooks page gives further information. 

There are a large number of Fine Art resources available on the Internet, just a few selected sites are listed below. There are many other useful and relevant sites available. Please evaluate web sources carefully.

Organisations and societies

• Arts Council England: the national development agency for the arts in England. Links to information on funding and publications, many of which are freely available online.
• Axis: an online resource for contemporary art that includes a national register of contemporary artists living and working in Britain, artist profiles, art news and views and information about relevant opportunities and vacancies. Membership of the Axis community is free.
• British Film Institute
• Crafts Council: an independent, government funded organisation which promotes the contemporary crafts in Great Britain
• Design Council: promotes all aspects of design in the UK.
• Institute of Visual Arts (inIVA): a contemporary visual arts organisation, with a special interest in new technologies, site-specific art works and international collaborations.
• The Printmakers Council: promotes the art of printmaking and the work of contemporary printmakers.
• UK Creative Industries
• ARTUK Online home for every UK public art collection. Brings together art from over 3,400 UK institutions, over 300,000 works by over 50,000 artists.

Galleries and museums

London

• Design Museum
• Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Fashion and Textile Museum
• Hayward Gallery
• ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts)
• National Gallery
• National Portrait Gallery
• Royal Academy of Arts
• Saatchi Gallery
• Serpentine Gallery
• Tate Britain
• Tate Modern
• V&A
• Whitechapel Gallery
• White Cube

UK

• Arnolfini
• BALTIC
• FACT
• Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
• Modern Art Oxford
• Pallant House Gallery
• Tate Liverpool
• Tate St Ives
• The New Art Gallery Walsall
• Yorkshire Sculpture Park
• Museum Crush: museum stories, previews and listings in the UK.

International

• Centre Georges Pompidou
• Dia Centre for the Arts, New York
• Guggenheim Museums: this web site services all the various Guggenheim projects, from the museums in Berlin and Bilbao to New York's Upper Eastside and Soho.
• MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• S.M.A.K.. Ghent
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
• Witte de With, Rotterdam (last updated 2021)

Image sources

Remember the library has subscriptions to ARTStor and Bridgeman education image databases, listed in the databases section

• Art and Architecture: 40,000 images from the collections of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Free to use but registration required.
• Europeana Art: explore 1,307,308 artworks from European collections.
• Europeana Fashion: digitised collections of more than 30 European public and private institutions.
• Europeana Photograhy: the history of photography in 1,366,437 items from European collections.
• Imageafter: free online collection of photographs and textures.
• MorgueFile: archive of photographs freely contributed by artists for use in creative projects by visitors to the site.
• VADS: the online resource for visual arts: a free image catalogue for the academic community providing access to over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK. Covers all aspects of the visual arts.
• Wikimedia Commons: database of over 4,000,000 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. Searchable by topic, location, type and author. Categories such as Featured pictures and Quality images are recommended.

Other sites you might find interesting

• AMP: Artists Meeting Place & Resource Collective: offers support and networking opportunities to artists all over the world. Includes an International Arts Directory covering a wide variety of art resources.
• e-flux Education: international contemporary visual arts site. Includes news, announcements and papers. 
• Arts Industry: news and jobs in the culture industry.
• Artcyclopedia: an index and guide to fine art sites on the web.
• Artforum: art news and exhibition previews. Includes Artguide, which is Artforum's guide to current exhibitions worldwide.
• Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research: latest news and information on artist's book exhibitions (with images) and research projects, and an archive of newsletters.
• International Sculpture Center: site based in Washington DC dedicated to the advancement of contemporary sculpture. Links to a wide range of sculpture resources and includes an electronic version of Sculpture magazine.
• London Centre for Book Arts: offers workshops and supervised studio access.
• Lux: organisation for British film and video art. Has a library and runs a regular programme of public screenings, exhibitions, talks and other events. Commissions writing on artists, which is available on the website.
• MoMA Exhibitions Archive: freely available online archive of all the exhibitions held at MoMA since it opened in 1929. Includes 33,000 installation shots, thousands of out of print exhibition catalogues, artist lists and press releases.
• Open Research Library: a single access point for open access e-books from a range of publishers. Particularly good for the arts and humanities.
• Sound and Music: website of UK organisation for the support and promotion of new music and sound. Provides an online community for artists and composers and listings of events and opportunities.

The Library holds exhibition catalogues from many of the major galleries. They are kept on the main shelves with the books.

Use LibrarySearch to locate them. You can search for the artist, gallery or title of the exhibition (e.g. Gary Hume, Tate Gallery or Sensation: young British artists from the Saatchi collection).

The Library has become the permanent home of the Museum of Modern Art Oxford Collection of Exhibition Catalogues. The Collection contains catalogues from galleries world-wide, primarily relating to post-1960s art. The Collection is for reference use only. It is in the process of being catalogued so whilst some material appears on LibrarySearch you will also need to browse the shelves of uncatalogued material in order to fully search the Collection. It can be found in the mobile shelving next to Zone B on Level 3 of the Library.

DVDs

The library has thousands of DVDs. If you don’t have a DVD Player, you can borrow an external DVD drive from the library welcome desk to plug into the USB port of your computer. The bulk of our DVDs are shelved around 791, but there are many others shelved throughout the collection. They are discoverable on LibrarySearch. Run the search, then use the format filter on the left of the results page to see just DVDs. If the film you are looking for is not available on BOB, or on DVD, we may still be able to help. Please contact the academic liaison librarian.

Artists' videos

The Library holds a growing collection of artists' videos. They are kept on the main shelves with the books on video art.

They are all shelved at 709.0407 or 709.04074. Some of the titles held in the Library are listed below:

• Barber, George. Beyond Language: selected video works, 1983 - 2008, 2008.
• Barney, Matthew. The order(from Cremaster 3), 2003.
• Beacons of Style, 1997.
  • This Cinenova program, which spans 20 years of British experimental feminist film practice, presents "a small but crucial selection of innovative work that has helped define avant-garde film in the UK."
• Beckman, Erica. The super-8 trilogy, 1978-1981, 2013.
• Chapman, Jake and Dinos. TV Sculpture, 1997.
• Clarke, Shirley. Portrait of Jason, 2005.
• Fischli, Peter and Weiss, David. Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), 2000.
• Grey Suit.
  • A 12 volume collection of short films plus recordings of theatrical performances and poetry readings. It includes films by Kai Zimmer, Annie Griffin, Sean Roe, Lorraine Butler, Paul Granjon, Teema Maki, Tony Hill, Harald Busc, Julia Woropy.
• Harrison, Oliver. The fallen word and collected films, 2013.
• Keen, Jeff. Gaswrx: the films of Jeff Keen, 2009.
• Miyajima, Tatsuo. Running Time, 1998.
• Morrison, Bill. Decasia: the state of decay, 2003.
• Pandemonium. Programme 1: Lost Locations Found. Curated by Abina Manning.
  • A package of film and video work by a number of international filmmakers and video artists.
• Petit, Chris and Sinclair, Ian. London Orbital, 2002
• Pucill, Sarah. Magic Mirror, 2013.
• Richardson, Emily. A volume of six films: Redshift (2001), Nocturne (2002), Aspect (2004), Petrolia (2005), Block (2005), Cobra M ist (2008)
• Sherwin, Guy. Optical sound films, 1971 - 2007, 2007.
• Snow, Michael. Presents, 2001.
• Surveying the First Decade. A comprehensive set of eight DVDs on the history of experimental and independent video from 1968 to 1980. It includes 68 seminal titles by over 50 artists.
• Tight Roaring Circle. A collaboration between Dana Caspersen, William Forsythe and Joel Ryan, filmed in The Roundhouse. 1998.
• Video poems. Compiled by Michael Maziere.
  • A compilation of short pieces by various European video artists.
• Viola, Bill. The Passing, 1995.
• Viola, Bill. Hatsu-Yume: first dream, 1998.
• Viola, Bill. Selected Works, 1998.
  • Includes Migration, The Reflecting Pool, Ancient of Days and Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait in Light and Heat).
• Warhol, Andy. Chelsea Girls, 2003 (film made in 1966) .
• Warhol, Andy. Empire, 2002 (film made in 1964).
• Woollett, Lucy. Ladies, all the ladies, 2009.

For further information on British film and video art Luxonline is an invaluable developing online resource. It contains biographies of artists and essays about them, descriptions of individual works together with a gallery of stills. REWIND: Artists video is another important resource for research into Artists' videos

Whilst Galleries and Museums are closed many are offering virtual tours and viewings. Here are a selection:

• Abel Rodríguez, BALTIC, Exhibition Views
• Andy Warhol, Tate Modern, Curators' Tour
• Digital Design Museum
• Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, MoMA, Virtual View
• Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection
• Young Rembrandt, Ashmolean Museum, Curator's Tour