Multidisciplinary articles covering nearly every area of academic study, most from 1970's to present.

ArchiveGrid includes over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

The Archives of American Art is the world’s preeminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

AATA Online is a free research database containing abstracts of literature related to the preservation and conservation of material cultural heritage. AATA Online contains over 170,000 records and adds approximately 4,000 new records each year through regular updates.

Articles on fine, decorative and commercial art, architecture and design including HW Wilson’s Art databases.

A structured vocabulary made up of terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to the visual arts.

Provides an international, art-focused research experience within the WorldCat environment. Request items found in ADGC through RISD's Interlibrary Loan service.

Artstor is JSTOR’s cross-disciplinary collection of over 2 million* rights-cleared images from around the world, discoverable alongside JSTOR’s journals, books, and other primary sources on one feature-rich platform. For more information on changes to Artstor/JSTOR, see the Artstor to JSTOR Migration Guide.

Online collection of material on the recent history of art from Asia, including archival and library materials.

Artists biographies, auction records, financial graphics, magazine ads, and images relating to artists from early 16th-century to present.

Statewide access to a selection of databases. A Rhode Island public library card number is required for login to full access to some databases.

Articles from international journals in architecture, design, landscape architecture, city planning, interior design, historic preservation, and decoration. 1934 to present. For tips on how to use, see our Avery Index guide.

Access to an expanding range of Berg content collections – including the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion online, e-books, reference works, images, etc.

BHA and RILA (Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art ) cover European and American visual arts material including articles from over 1,200 journals. These citation databases, searchable together, cover material published between 1975 and 2007.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives.

The Black Beauty Archive preserves the rich history of Black beauty culture. With a chronological focus from 1941 to the present, the Black Beauty Archive collection contains more than 3,500 objects including full issue magazines, books, hair tools, wigs, cosmetics, photographs, posters, oral histories, interviews, audiovisual resources and more.

Provides comprehensive content on sustainable design practices and green building materials. Shares expertise and lessons learned from design experts working in the field. Builds context for sustainable design strategies and what makes a building product or material green.

Style guide for writing research papers.

Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages from local and regional sources within the US published in 1756-1963.

The Internet Archive and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have embarked on a collaborative project aimed at capturing and preserving at-risk web-based art materials. The project, formerly called the Consortial Action to Preserve Born-Digital Web-Based Art History & Culture and renamed as Collaborative ART Archive (CARTA), created a collaborative entity of art libraries building collections of archived web-based content related to art history and contemporary art practice. Through this collaborative approach, the project leverages shared infrastructure, expertise and collecting activities amongst participating organizations, scaling the extent of web-published, born-digital materials preserved and accessible for art scholarship and research. The goals are to promote streamlined access to art reference and research resources, enable new types of scholarly use for art-related materials, and ensure that the art historical record of the 21st century is readily accessible far into the future.

Common Dimensions seeks to expand our understanding of (and connection to) chairs through a collection of interviews with artists, designers, and collectors, an ever-expanding online visual archive, and a growing database of texts that both enlarge upon and complicate the topic.

Search openly licensed, free-to-use images from across Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, and more. CC Search searches across more than 300 million images from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset.

Offers over 1,000 full-text reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, atlases, thesauri) that cover a broad scope of subject areas. Image types include charts, diagrams, graphs, illustrations, maps, photos.

This resource links out to databases promoting diverse practitioners in their fields. Includes databases such as Cartoonists of Color, Female Experts on Japan & the Koreas, Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network, and much more.

Articles, news items, and reviews published in design and applied arts journals from 1973 to present. Subjects: Advertising, packaging and product design, Architecture, Crafts, Ceramics, glass and jewelry, Industrial design, Graphic design, Fashion and textiles, Sustainable design, Furniture and interior design, and Fiber arts.

Digital Commons @ RISD is a digital archive of the creative and scholarly culture of Rhode Island School of Design. It is a collection of outstanding faculty and student work, college records, campus history, and the unique materials of the Library's Special Collections. Use it across other institutions to locate theses, dissertations, and more.

DPLA is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata from libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions around the country. It makes millions of open access materials available to in a one-stop interface.

DOAB increases discoverability of Open Access books, which are free to use and disseminate. The directory is open to all publishers who publish peer reviewed books that meet Open Access and academic standards, and covers a very broad range of topics.

DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.

A growing eBook collection that contains a large selection of multidisciplinary titles representing a broad range of academic subject matter.

A growing archive of streaming experimental video, media art and performance documentation from the 1960s to present, featuring work from 60+ artists. EAI is a has been a leading international resource for video and media art since 1971.

Featuring 815 articles by distinguished scholars from many fields and countries, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics is a comprehensive survey of major concepts, thinkers, and debates about the meaning, uses, and value of all the arts—from painting and sculpture to literature, music, theater, dance, television, film, and popular culture.

Online encyclopedia that aggregates open access biology and biodiversity knowledge and connects users to other information at other trusted natural science institutions.

Access to journal articles; conference proceedings; technical reports; publications of professional associations, research/policy organizations, government agencies, and more 1966 to present.

Online hub for digitized content, such as ebooks, music, and artwork from thousands of European cultural institutions.

This free database offers essential content covering important issues related to race in society today. Essays, articles, reports and other reliable sources provide an in-depth look at the history of race and provide critical context for learning more about topics associated with race, ethnicity, diversity and inclusiveness.

Articles covering film and television theory, preservation and restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

Combined search tool (many of our article databases + the RISD/Athenaeum Catalog). For tips on how best to use, see our Fleet Search guide.

Information about contemporary furniture design and sustainable manufacturing

Articles related to gardening topics, with special focus on environmentally sustainable horticultural and design practices.

GrantForward is an extensive database of sponsors and funding opportunities, allowing thousands of grant opportunities to be gathered from over 9,000 US Sponsors. Join GrantForward for easy access to a large network of sponsors, thousands of grant opportunities, and personal recommendations. Access to GrantForward is provided by RISD Research.

Articles on human impact on the environment, covering global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.

A searchable archive of the US (1867 to present) and UK (1930-2015) editions of Harper's Bazaar. The issues are reproduced as high-resolution color page images and supported by fully searchable text and article-level indexing. This resource chronicles over 150 years of American, British, and international fashion, culture, and society, supporting researchers by offering unique insights into the events, attitudes, and interests of the modern era.

A preservation repository with millions of volumes digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and HathiTrust’s partner institutions. Approximately one-third of the volumes are in the public domain and can be viewed in their entirety.

The collections include images and descriptive data related to the iconography of works of art produced between late Antiquity and the sixteenth century.

Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. The site hosts Wayback Machine, a searchable archive of the internet's past. Other strengths include retro video games and software, audiobooks, historic manuscripts, newspapers, and other special collections. Make a free account to borrow from a huge online selection of popular books.

Japan Search is a national platform that aggregates more than 30 million digital resources (images, maps, and other cultural heritage materials) from 260 databases across Japan.

An archive of scholarly articles and books. JSTOR is not a current article database, typically from 1 to 5 years behind most recently published journals.
JSTOR ACCESS
To use RISD's full-text subscription to JSTOR, you must go through this link:
You can either enter your library account login, or use the RISD VPN to authenticate yourself as a RISD user. Look for this message on the top of the screen: "Access provided by Rhode Island School of Design". This will indicate that you're in the right place. If you have problems, take a screenshot or grab the URL and email us so we can help you: researchhelp@risd.edu.
Note: In general, any time you use a RISD subscription database, it is best to use the library's links, all found at Databases A-Z.

Use JSTOR to explore digitized visual content from Fleet Library's Special Collections, Archives, and the Visual + Material Resource Center. Collections include artists' books, architectural photographs, posters, pulp fiction book covers, Victorian illustration, and much more.

With nearly 1,500 objects and 9,000 hi-fi images, Letterform Archive offers virtual access to its online collection.

Repository for digitized images and documents in the Library of Congress' collections.

Covers articles, books, research reports and proceedings relating to librarianship, from mid-1960s to present.

Information on authors and their works across literary disciplines from antiquity to present, from books, reference works, and articles published 1912 to present. Can be searched together with MLA International Bibliography.

Language learning tool provided by AskRI

Utilizing and developing standards and best practices, the Material Order consortium provides a community-based approach to the management of design material collections with federated search access among participating institutions. Use this search tool to explore the material collections of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), Columbia University, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). As a RISD student, you have access to many of these samples!

The Materiom platform gathers the world of regenerative material solutions (biomaterials) to optimize and match them to real-world needs. The Materiom community includes material scientists, designers, engineers, data scientists, and sustainability experts. Create an account to access the Materiom materials database.

Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) includes 274 diverse, peer-reviewed, open access scientific journals.

Articles covering literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Can be searched together with Literary Reference Center.

Sign up using your RISD email to access our campus-wide subscription to NY Times, including their full archive. Sign Up Instructions

Defines and traces the usage of words through quotations from a wide range of international and English language sources.

Pioneering Women of American Architecture is a collection of profiles of fifty women who have made important contributions to American architecture. All of these women were born before 1940, at a time when women struggled both to be allowed entry into the architectural profession and to be recognized for their work.

Provides scholarly articles to hundreds of humanities, art, and social science journals.

215,000+ peer-reviewed articles are free to access, reuse and redistribute.

Publication Finder is a tool for finding magazines and journals owned by the library across print and digital formats.

PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

A resource on digital media and emerging artistic practices that engage technology. Host of ArtBase, an archive of born-digital art.

Provides access to archival and manuscript collections throughout Rhode Island.

Formerly the Architectural Publications Index, The British Architectural Library is the largest and most comprehensive resource in the United Kingdom for research and information on all aspects of architecture. It is regarded as the national collection on architecture in the UK.

The Picture Collection contains almost 500,000 hardcopy images of people, places and things. These images are culled from magazines, books, postcards and other ephemera, and they are gathered in folders. Use this index to explore topics and subjects before your visit.

Browse this list for recent DVD titles added the collection.

Search for books, DVDS, music, ebooks in RISD Library and Providence Athenaeum collections.

Contains histories, photographs and maps for over 20,000 structures and places, and showcases the richness and diversity of architecture and landscapes throughout the U.S. Building entries include scholar-written, peer-reviewed narrative histories, photographs, precise geospatial coordinates using Google Maps/ OpenStreetMap, and structural and descriptive metadata that includes semantic tags for architects and firms, periods, styles, materials and types.

SciELO is a bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing model of open access journals. SciELO was created to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries and provides an efficient way to increase visibility and access to scientific literature.

Articles on the natural sciences from 1994 to present.

Open access works provided by Science Direct publishing (Elsevier).

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI.

Online catalog of the collections of the Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries. Search over 17.7 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 7.8 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts.

Smithsonian Open Access includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.

Contains teacher and administrator articles, journals, and books.

Coverage of the scientific and technological aspects of textile production and processing.

Browse thematic collections around topical issues, shared concerns, and transdisciplinary interests.

UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.

A global structured vocabulary of Artists names and their variations from antiquity to present.

A international source of publisher information on all types of periodicals including journals, newspapers, and open source publications. Use for literature reviews and to determine if a journal is peer reviewed. See the Ulrich's User Guide for more info or ask a Research & Instruction Librarian for a demo of this database's features.

Articles covering areas related to urban studies, including urban affairs, community development, and urban history, 1973 to present.

Open access PDFs of nearly every major US 20th-century architecture magazine. Full editions, downloadable, and free. No login required.

A complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.

A comprehensive archive of Women’s Wear Daily, from the first issue in 1910 to material from within the last twelve months, reproduced in high-resolution images.

Search the collections of libraries, local, national, and worldwide. Most items found can be requested through Interlibrary Loan.