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Art and Architecture: Primary Sources

Resources in Art and Architecture

What are Primary Sources?

Primary Sources are original materials that have not been edited, evaluated, or altered by a second party.

Examples include letters, diaries, interviews, speeches, audio and video recordings, statistics, legal or organizational records, and arifacts (including works of art).

Finding Primary Sources at UCSB

Finding Other Primary Sources

  • Beazley Archive
    • Collection of casts and photographs of Classical Greek and Roman Art from the University of Oxford
  • Bücher zur Architektur und Gartenkunst
    • Free resource- from the University of Heidelberg
    • Over 80 rare books, among them, Palladio, Vitruvius, Vignola, Serlio, Blondel, and Fischer von Erlach-- from the 15th to the 19th century covering architecture and landscape architecture
  • Calisphere
    • More than 150,000 items- including photographs, documents from libraries and museums in the UC and other institutions in California
  • Guggenheim Publications
    • Digitized exhibition catalogs from the Guggenheim Museum, including essays from 1937 to the present
  • Library of Congress' Digital Collections
     
  • Medici Archive Project
    • Online database of the Medici Granducal Archive (1573-1743)
  • OAIster
    • Free resource. Included are archival resources, digitized books and articles, born digital texts, audio files, images, movies, and data sets
  • Online Archive of California
    • Free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections by more than 150 institutions
    • Includes libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California
    • Maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses