Fine Arts Library
Fine Arts Library Collections
The Fine Arts Library is both an academic research library and a museum library comprising significant and extensive printed and image collections. The printed collections now number more than 300,000 volumes. This includes the Rübel Asiatic Research Collection of more than 12,000 volumes in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
The Fine Arts Library image collections contain more than 1.6 million slides, study and historic photographs, and special collections. The library has extensive holdings in the fields of master drawings, Romanesque sculpture, Renaissance painting, French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Islamic and Asian art. A major collection of historic and current auction sale catalogs, large holdings of exhibition catalogs, the literature of conservation and technical study of works of art, history of photography, and Russian and East European art add to the strength of the library's resources.
Materials on art-related topics can also be found in other Harvard College libraries. Architecture and design are collected by the Frances Loeb Library of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The primary collection of African, Native American, pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and other ethnographic materials may be found at the Tozzer Library.
VIA
The Visual Information Access (VIA) system is a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard. It includes information about slides, photographs, objects, and artifacts in the University's libraries, museums, and archives. Work to automate image cataloging in the Slides and Digital Images Department began in 1996. The records currently available in VIA represent only a portion of available images.
Images in VIA are provided solely for the purpose of teaching or individual research. Any other use—including commercial reuse, mounting on other systems, or other forms of redistribution—requires permission of the appropriate office of Harvard University or Schlesinger Library.
