Image Databases
UBC Library subscribes to a number of online databases that include a variety of images, from art and architecture, to fashion, humanities, anatomy, and much more. Highlighted below are some of the main licensed databases that provide access to images.
For more databases visit Indexes & Databases and search for "images."
Note: Access to these resources is available only to UBC students, faculty, staff and on-site Library users. Users will need to make sure their computers are configured for off-campus access when researching away from campus.
- Artstor This link opens in a new windowA digital image library for the arts and sciences with an unparalleled range of images licensed for educational use at UBC.
- Archivision This link opens in a new windowArchivision is a database of over 80,000 high quality, professionally photographed images of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, archaeology, and design searchable within the MDID platform.
- Detail Inspiration This link opens in a new windowOver 3,000 architecture and building projects from the last 50 years of Detail available for pdf download.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowA scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications.
- Berg Fashion Library This link opens in a new windowCovers interdisciplinary and integrated text, image, and journal content on world dress and fashion. Useful for researching or studying fashion, anthropology, art history, history, museum studies, & cultural studies.
- North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowAmerican and Canadian primary source materials. Mainly textual materials from American libraries (books, articles, pamphlets, oral histories). Indexed for place, event and individuals. Also audio, video, images.
- Global Plants This link opens in a new windowGlobal Plants is the world's largest database of digitized plant specimens and a locus for international scientific research and collaboration.
- Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new windowFull-colour images of medieval manuscripts from the Paston, Stonor, Cely, Plumpton and Armburgh Papers. Includes, where available, searchable full-text transcripts from the principal printed editions.
- LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 (Part II)Fully searchable periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, and correspondence. Also includes posters, and other primary source materials. Selected by an advisory board of leading scholars and librarians in sexuality and gender studies.
Index Databases
In addition to Image Databases, UBC Library also subscribes to Index Databases. Some databases contain bibliographies, abstracts, reference entires and indexes about art and artists to help you broaden your research. Some databases index illustrations and art reproductions found in periodicals; other bibliographic databases include entries about artists from antiquity to the present day. A selection of the main image Index Databases is provided below.
- Art Full Text This link opens in a new windowIndexes Art, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning journals. Reproductions of works of art appearing in periodicals are also indexed.
- DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index This link opens in a new windowArticles, news items, and reviews published in design and applied arts periodicals from 1973 onwards. Information on designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops, firms etc.
- Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984 This link opens in a new windowProvides high-quality indexing of nearly 600 publications - many of which are peer-reviewed - and citations of over 25,000 book reviews. Coverage includes fine, decorative and commercial arts.
- Vogue Archives This link opens in a new windowContains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 to the present day, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.
- Independent Voices This link opens in a new windowIndependent Voices is a four-year project to digitize over 1 million pages from the magazines, journals and newspapers of the alternative press archives.
- Index of Medieval Art This link opens in a new windowArchive of medieval art, describing and presenting iconographic subjects and images, without geographical limitation, from early apostolic times to the early modern era.
- Artists in Canada This link opens in a new windowUnion list of Canadian artists, giving biographical information and location of files of over 42,000 Canadian artists in 23 libraries and galleries across Canada.
- International Bibliography of Art (IBA) This link opens in a new windowThe definitive resource for scholarly literature on Western art, IBA is the successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
- Benezit Dictionary of Artists This link opens in a new windowWith nearly 170,000 entries on artists from antiquity to the present day and featuring regular updates, Benezit is one of the most comprehensive and definitive resources on artists in the English language.
- Art and Architecture Archive: Architecture & Design This link opens in a new windowFull-text archive of journals, magazines and trade publications comprising key research material in the fields of architecture and design, dating from the late-19th to 21st century.
Open Access Databases
Open Access content is available to everyone: students, scholars, professionals, and the public. Although material may be copyrighted, more and more institutions are removing barriers to research and are making their image collections freely available online.
The following is a list of freely available online databases containing images from UBC Library's Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC), the Museum of Anthropology (MOA), and other Open Access sources. For more digitized collections from UBC, see: UBC Library's Open Collections.
- Points to the Past
Points to the Past is an entry point into primary source collections, made up of nearly 200 million pages of digitized historical content – maps, photos, newspapers, manuscripts, pamphlets, portraits, and much more. Access databases including Indigenous Peoples North America, Slavery & Anti-slavery: A Transnational Archive, British Literary Manuscripts & 19th Century British Newspapers. - British Columbia Regional Digitized History
Search BCDRH to access copies of regional historical resources including photographs, textual documents and publications from participating BC memory institutions. - elementsdb
elementsdb is a case-based database of comparatively measured and illustrated examples of urban land use: buildings, streets and open spaces; residential, commercial, civic, & industrial. It is maintained by elementsLAB, an urban form and environment research group in the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA). - Museum of Anthropology at UBC Collections Online
Explore MOA’s nearly 50,000 objects now on the Collections Online (MOA-CAT) system. MOA’s ethnographic objects come from around world, including the South Pacific, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. - The Chung Collection in UBC Open Collections
The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection is an outstanding collection of archival documents, photographs, books and artifacts related to three broad themes: British Columbia History, Immigration and Settlement and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The collection was donated in 1999 by Drs. Wallace and Madeline Chung and is located in UBC's Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC). - Japanese Canadian Photograph Collection in UBC Open Collections
As with the larger Japanese Canadian Research Collection of which it forms a part, the Japanese Canadian Photograph Collection (JCPC) was assembled by UBC Library's RBSC from various donors beginning in the 1970s. While the JCPC documents a wide range of the experiences of Canadians of Japanese descent in British Columbia, the resource is particularly strong in chronicling their treatment during World War II. - Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs in UBC Open Collections
The Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs consists of more than 7,900 images from 77 albums. This collection includes extensive coverage of B.C. from the 1850s to the 1950s and includes photographs in a wide variety of formats and genres including albums, diaries, portraits, landscapes and city/townscapes. - Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era in UBC Open Collections
UBC Library's RBSC holds one of the world's largest collections of maps and guidebooks of the Japanese Tokugawa period, ca. 1600-1867. The collection varies in both format and size: items range from small single-sheet maps to more than thirty square feet, and also include a ceramic plate, a woodblock, and maps in scroll format. - Andrew McCormick Maps and Prints in UBC Open Collections
A diverse collection of historical maps and illustrations, dating from 1503 to 1910, documenting the exploration and mapping of the world, the evolution of cartography, and the exploration and settlement of North America, collected by Andrew McCormick, a long-time faculty member of UBC's Department of Ophthamology.
