ECM Advent Calendar Window 5 : Christmas cards on the Art & Architecture ePortal

Guest post by Suzanne Edgar, ebooks@cambridge

Alden Finney Brooks (1840–1932)
The Christmas Card (Child with Christmas Card) (1881)

The Art & Architecture ePortal (A&AePortal) is the place to look for Christmas card design inspiration! You can browse the platform for festive cards and seasonal imagery with image keyword searches.

 

On the platform you will find several Christmas cards from American printer, lithographer and publisher Louis Prang, who is sometimes known as the “father of the American Christmas card.” 

In 1880, Prang launched an annual Christmas card design competition which promised public exhibition and publication as its prize. The competition drew many “feeble and sentimental entries” (!) rendered in crayon, but also the work of professionals and artists such as Elihu Vedder.

Here is Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s 1884 entry, Gloria, which depicts four angels playing harps.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851–1938)
Gloria, 1884

Gloria did not win that year, though the work was exhibited in Boston and was described as “the most lovely thing in the entire collection.”

The information, images and quotes in this blogpost are taken from the chapter “Art for a Decorative Age” in  American watercolor in the age of Homer and Sargent by Kathleen A. Foster, which is available on the A&AePortal, along with much more art and architectural history scholarship.

New e-resource : Art & Architecture Archive

Collections 1 & 2 of the ProQuest Art & Architecture Archive are now available for members of the University of Cambridge to access.

A full-text archive of magazines comprising key research material in the fields of art and architecture, dating from the late-nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Subjects covered include fine art, decorative arts, architecture, interior design, industrial design, and photography. The issues are presented as full-color page images; detailed article-level indexing permits quick, efficient searching and navigation of this material.

Art & Architecture Archive is a major research resource comprising the digitized backfiles of many of the foremost art and architecture magazines of the twentieth century. Offering unprecedented access to the archives of key consumer and trade publications, it is a unique collection of the essential primary sources for studying the history of these subjects. The magazines cover the spectrum of sub-disciplines, from fine and applied arts, through to interior design, industrial design, and landscape gardening. Issues are scanned from cover to cover in high resolution color and presented in page image format with fully searchable text.^*

The high-quality reproduction and easy discoverability of the original content will allow scholars, students, and practitioners of fine art to draw inspiration from the many artworks displayed in visual arts titles such as Apollo and Art Monthly. They may also study features and reviews revealing the contemporary reception of specific works.

Trade magazines, widely recognized as indispensable sources for art and architecture, are also strongly represented. Research materials and technical guidance are available to those working in areas including graphic design, construction, and product design, in publications such as Print, Architectural Review, and Graphis, respectively.

In combination, the consumer magazines and the trade publications comprise an invaluable reference source, as a historical record of the art and architecture industries. Through reviews, advertisements, exhibition listings, and awards, users may trace the careers of major artists and architects, as well as the history of the commercialization and marketing of art.

The Art & Architecture Archive is also available to access via the Databases A-Z.

Text from the ProQuest platform.

Trial access: BBC Monitoring: Summary of World Broadcasts access available until 10th April 2023

The University of Cambridge has trial access to BBC Monitoring: Summary of World Broadcasts Essential Global Media, 1939-2001 until 10th April 2023.

What do you think of these database? Have your say on this feedback form. We value your feedback.

Nearly 70,000 individual printed reports comprising several million pages were produced during the life of Summary of World Broadcasts.

This digital archive was created from the unique copy of the complete hard-media archive preserved at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading, England.

This archive includes transcripts of global radio and television broadcasts, telegraph, and news sources translated into English and summarized by the BBC Monitoring Service. For ease of use, the collection has been divided into several components covering periods in which the content remained largely static, as follows:

• Daily Digest of Foreign Broadcasts (later Daily Digest of World Broadcasts), August 28, 1939 – April 23, 1945
• Daily Digest of World Broadcasts (later Digest of World Broadcasts and Radio Telegraph Services), May 24, 1945 – May 6, 1947
• Digest of World Broadcasting, May 7, 1947 – May 27, 1947
• Summary of World Broadcasts, May 28, 1947 – May 24, 1949
• Summary of World Broadcasts, May 25, 1949 – April 15, 1959
• Summary of World Broadcasts Second Series, April 15, 1959 – November 13, 1987
• Summary of World Broadcasts Third Series, November 16, 1987 – August/September 1993
• Summary of World Broadcasts Third Series, August/September 1993 – March 30, 2001

You can also access these databases via the Databases A-Z. Text from the Newsbank platform.

Image credit – ‘BBC Colour’ by Miles Davis (Smiley) on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/81u4GQ

Trial access: Building Types Online access available until 10th March 2023

The University of Cambridge has trial access to Building Types Online until 10th March 2023. What do you think of these database? Have your say on this feedback form. We value your feedback. Building Types Online The database Building Types Online is a resource for the study and practice of architectural design. It is based on Birkhäuser’s high international standing in professional architecture books, on the knowledge of the authors and editors who are leading experts in their fields, as well as on the technical quality of the illustrations. The database offers exclusive and unparalleled, highly flexible and detailed search and browse access to the contents of the Birkhäuser program on building types. All content was written and selected by internationally renowned authors in architectural design. Your benefits:

• Large international collection of contemporary buildings, from housing and offices to museums, schools and other building types
• Focus on floor plans and other architectural drawings in unrivalled quality. A large part of the drawings are vector-based

You can also access these databases via the Databases A-Z. Text from the de Gruyter platform.

E-resources Advent Calendar Window 4: “Design perfection”: King’s College Chapel

Browsing our Bloomsbury Architecture Library, we were delighted to discover King’s College Chapel, home each year to the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, featured in Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture, v. 2 –

Figure 63.5. King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, England (1446–61, 1485, vaulting 1508–13). Huge traceried windows turn the chapel’s interior almost into a cage of stone and glass, while the fan vaulting, built by the mason John Wastell, represents an English design innovation, here brought to perfection. riba collections.

Visit the amazing Architecture page on the Art & Architecture LibGuide for more exciting online resources in Architecture.

New E-Resource – Construction Information Service (CIS)

We are very pleased to provide online access to the Construction Information Service (CIS), a knowledge tool delivering technical information to the construction market.

Please note first time users need to register with their @cam.ac.uk email address and create an account.

From the publisher website:

Developed by IHS Markit and NBS, the Construction Information Service (CIS) is an online tool to quickly access current regulations, construction standards, technical advice and industry news on building, engineering, design and construction processes in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Updated weekly, the CIS offers a powerful search engine to find authoritative information for every stage of the construction lifecycle from design and completion to operation and ongoing use. Easy-to-use search filters allow you to query 26,000+ documents – including full text copies of British standards, CIBSE documents, and technical data – from 500+ publishers and more.

More information about this service is available in this brochure.

Construction Information Service (CIS) is also available to access via the Databases A-Z.

Art & Architecture Archive : access until 17th September 2020

University of Cambridge members now have access to ProQuest’s Art & Architecture Archive until 17th September 2020.

Please send your feedback about any of this eresource using the online form.

Art & Architecture Archive is a major research resource comprising the digitized backfiles of many of the foremost art and architecture magazines of the twentieth century. Offering unprecedented access to the archives of key consumer and trade publications, it is a unique collection of the essential primary sources for studying the history of these subjects. The magazines cover the spectrum of sub-disciplines, from fine and applied arts, through to interior design, industrial design, and landscape gardening. Issues are scanned from cover to cover in high resolution color and presented in page image format with fully searchable text.

Trade magazines, widely recognized as indispensable sources for art and architecture, are also strongly represented. Research materials and technical guidance are available to those working in areas including graphic design, construction, and product design, in publications such as Print, Architectural Review, and Graphis, respectively.

In combination, the consumer magazines and the trade publications comprise an invaluable reference source, as a historical record of the art and architecture industries. Through reviews, advertisements, exhibition listings, and awards, users may trace the careers of major artists and architects, as well as the history of the commercialization and marketing of art.

Art & Architecture Archive also serves wider research in the humanities and social sciences, with sociologists and historians, for example, able to locate primary sources attesting to the relationship between art movements and social trends.

The ability to cross-search these magazine backfiles within a single database creates an unrivalled opportunity for researchers to locate a comprehensive body of primary source material relating to particular individuals, topics and movements, across a variety of publications and document types. A single search may return industry news items, interviews with major artists, and features about technological developments, as well as photographs / illustrations, architectural plans, statistics, and reviews.

Also available to access via the Databases A-Z.

Photo by Jeffrey Czum from Pexels

Photo by Jeffrey Czum from Pexels

Text taken from the ProQuest platform

Innes Review

New on ejournals@cambridge A-Z :

Innes review

The Innes Review is the journal of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association. The journal promotes the study of the history of Catholic Scotland, covering all aspects and topics related to Scottish history and culture, including but not limited to: ecclesiastical, cultural, liturgical, architectural, literary and political history from earliest times to the present day.

Published on behalf of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association

Volume 1, 1950

 

Access Innes Review via the E-Journals Search,  iDiscover or via the direct links at the top of this post.

De Gruyter database trials : access until 1 July 2020

The University of Cambridge has access to four databases from De Gruyter until 1 July 2020:

• Building Types Online
• Deutsche Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts Online
• Nietzsche Online
• WBIS World Biographical Index Online

Please tell us what you think of these databases using the online form.

 

Building Types Online

This database is a resource for the study and practice of architectural design. It is based on Birkhäuser’s high international standing in professional architecture books, on the knowledge of the authors and editors who are leading experts in their fields, as well as on the technical quality of the illustrations.

Deutsche Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts Online

This online database contains first editions and complete historical editions of leading representatives of the Enlightenment such as Bürger, Gottsched, Herder, Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Moritz, Nicolai, Wieland and many more, the writings of the “Göttinger Hainbund” and works of the Swiss Enlightenment. Most notably however, it also contains the writings of hundreds of authors who were less well-known or are nowadays all but forgotten, but who nevertheless contributed to the literary Enlightenment in Germany with their lyrical, dramatic and epic works.

Nietzsche Online

This database Nietzsche Online provides researchers and readers complete online access to the editions, interpretations and reference works on one of the most important philosophers. Users thus obtain access to a comprehensive database containing the research results of the last forty years.

WBIS World Biographical Index Online

This is the most comprehensive and extensive biographical database with information on persons, families and groups from all classes and professions, from all countries and regions of the earth, from the 4th millennium BC to the present.

You can also access these databases via the Databases A-Z.

Periodicals Archive Online (complete) : access until 31st May 2020

Complete access to Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) is available until 31st May 2020 in addition to our perpetual access of the JISC colecltions within PAO.

Please send any feedback you have about this archive via the online form.

Periodicals Archive Online is a major archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.

Providing access to the full text of a growing number of digitized periodicals that have been indexed in its sister database, Periodicals Index Online.

Currently, Periodicals Archive Online contains over 700 journals comprising more than 3 million articles and 15 million article pages. Periodicals Archive Online continues to add new titles, to give undergraduate and graduate students, university faculty and libraries access to a growing collection of key journals in the humanities and social sciences.

All of the journals in Periodicals Archive Online are of significant value to scholars. Whilst the majority of titles are peer-reviewed academic journals, a number of carefully selected publications are included that were not originally scholarly in nature but now represent essential research material.

Newspapers, journals composed entirely of pictorial matter and journals that are indexes (i.e. abstracts, current contents services or bibliographies) are not considered. Monograph series may be included, however.