Resources not included in Summon: Overview and databases

Yinka Shonibare, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, 2010. Mixed media (280 x 250 x 500 cm).
Installation view at Fourth Plinth, London, 2010. Source: Simon Wicks, Flickr (edited).
Licence.

Summon is usually the best place to begin looking for resources, but it does not contain everything. Some resources are not searched by Summon at all, while with others the coverage is patchy. This guide lists databases, journals, e-books and other resources best searched separately.

• free resources guide for even more suggestions

For many topics, Summon will find you sufficient material. Depending on how thorough you want to be, and how easy it is to find resources on your topic, you may want to spend a little or even a lot of time looking at these other resources.

Databases

The following databases are only partially searched by Summon:

• Directory of Open Access Journals
• EBSCO databases (Art & Architecture Source, Business Source Premier and GreenFILE). You can search all at once with EBSCO: combined search. The EBSCO databases are major collections of journal articles. For many topics with either an art or business focus, a Summon search followed by an EBSCO search will be a very good start. With a British Library reader's ticket you can access a more comprehensive business database: visit the British Library's electronic resources list, and search for Business Source Complete​
• Internet Archive Scholar. Includes some content hard to access elsewhere.
• LGBTQ+ Rights
• Nexis Uni. Important for business articles from newspapers and other sources.

Google Scholar is an alternative to Summon, useful for a supplementary search, or if Summon does not give you access to an article you want. 

• more info about Scholar
• video intro to Scholar (3 mins)

The following databases are not searched at all by Summon:

• AATA (Abstracts of International Conservation Literature)
• archive databases
• Archives of American Art
• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online
• ART-Dok
• artnet, Artprice and other price databases
• AWARE
• Bibliography of the History of Art
• Blue Mountain Project
• Catalogues Raisonnés Database
• EconStor
• Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History 
• Index to Catalogues Raisonnés of Works on Paper
• OpenBibArt
• Modernist Journals Project
• Sotheby's and Christie's sales catalogues, 2020 onwards please email library@sia.edu for password: available to current SIA staff and students only
• Union List of Artist Names
• repositories which are important collections of recent scholarly material.
• many databases of dissertations and theses

• video: searching databases of journal articles and similar material (5 mins)

There are many more free online resources, far too many to list here.  Looking at the library guide for the appropriate course or topic will point you to some of the best of these.

Databases available at other libraries in London include:

• Art History Research net: National Art Library
• Art Sales Catalogues Online (incorporating Lugt's Répertoire): British Library and National Art Library
• Artists of the World Online (Thieme and Becker's Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon): British Library and National Art Library
• Berg Fashion Library: National Art Library
• Bibliography of Asian Studies: SOAS
• Bloomsbury Applied Visual Arts and Bloomsbury Design Library: Westminster Reference Library
• Blouin Art Sales Index: National Art Library
• Business Source Complete: British Library - more comprehensive than Business Source Premier
• Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI): British Library and National Art Library
• Fairchild Books Library: Westminster Business Library, Westminster Reference Library
• Fashion Monitor: Westminster Business Library
• Gordon's Photography Prices and Gordon's Print Prices: National Art Library
• Index of Medieval Art: National Art Library
• International Bibliography of Art (IBA): National Art Library
• LGBTQ+ Source: British Library
• other LGBTQ+ databases: British Library, Senate House Library for MA students only
• Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography: British Library, National Art Library, Westminster Reference Library and elsewhere
• Research Methods Primary Sources: Senate House Library for MA students only
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: Senate House Library for MA students only
• Russian Avant-Garde Online: British Library
• SCIPIO: British Library
• World's Fairs: A Global History of Expositions: National Art Library, Senate House Library for MA students only


• other libraries guide for access details to these libraries