Thursday, September 8, 2011

New Database: Art & Architecture Complete


Here is another example of switching out one database for another that is better, easier to use, and which has more indexing and more full-text (and even images).

We have just replaced our Wilson Art Full Text with EBSCOhost's Art & Architecture Complete This change should provide more extensive research options for NESAD-SU, Humanities, and other Sawyer Library users interested in topics related to the visual arts.

The publisher notes that "this database provides full-text coverage of more than 380 periodicals and 220 books. In addition, Art & Architecture Complete offers cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 780 academic journals, magazines and trade publications, as well as over 230 books. The database also provides selective coverage for more than 70 additional publications,and an Image Collection of over 65,000 images provided by Picture Desk and others."

Our users are well-familiar with the EBSCOhost interface and with all the useful text-linking options available on the EBSCO platform. There will be many previously unavailable options for getting scholarly articles and trade magazine content from this useful file. And although there are lots of ways to limit and refine your search on the opening screen, if you are interested just in the images, you might want to click "More" in the border and open just an image search. As illustrated below.

However, keep in mind that if it is images you are interested in, ARTstor is a much more useful image-only database. (The only downside to that resource is it doesn't work well with our proxy server and really requires that interested users register for a personal account when they are on-campus.)

Art & Architecture Complete, on the other hand, should work well off-campus, for any current Suffolk CAS/SBS user--no individual accounts required! We hope you'll take advantage of this "Complete" database the next time you have "artistic" research needs.

[Find Art & Architecture Complete on our A-Z database list, or in our Subject Database List for Literature, Arts and Humanities.]

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