Fine Arts - Art, Architecture and Photography

Art research includes Art History, Visual Studies, Architecture, Photography, Studio (practicing) Art and Design Studies.  Duke Libraries support these areas with a specialized branch library, the Lilly Library on East Campus, as well as with support collections particularly at Perkins-Bostock and the Divinity School Library.   

Art research relies on specialized reference sources of which the library owns an extensive collection.  These include unique genres, such as catalogues raisonnés (all the works of an individual artist), corpora (catalogs of a certain kind of object), manuscript facsimilies, exhibition catalogs, art-periodicals and indexes to them, and image databases. In addition, the library art-support collections are as disparate as graphic novels, emblemata (books interpreting symbols at the time of their use), photography books (both fine and documentary), comic-books and videos of performance art.

The library's online catalog contains all these materials--essentially everything except individual articles.  It's important to note that fewer art resources are electronic than in other disciplines, owning to the disparate copyright of images.  The art librarian, Lee Sorensen, answers research questions daily through email, phone 660-5994 and in person at the Lilly Library.