LibGuides: Design: Databases

Overview Resources

Find background information on your topic so that you'll begin to understand the who, what, when, where, why, and vocabulary surrounding your topic. This will help you narrow your topic to something manageable and will give you a bit of context so that you can decide more easily where to search later.

Academic Search Complete
1865 - present. Unlimited users.

Updated daily. A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
Benezit Dictionary of Artists
Most current edition. 1 user.
With 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. Benezit contains thousands of auction records, museum holdings, and bibliographies.
We have a limited number of users for this database. Please select the logout option before you leave your session. When the limit is reached, a username and password prompt will probably be displayed. If this happens, simply wait 15 minutes and then try the link again.
Gale eBooks
Most current edition. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. Fully searchable across all files.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Oxford Art Online
Most current edition. 8 users.
Updated daily. Provides Web access to the entire text of The Dictionary of Art (1996, 34 vols.) with annual additions of new material and updates to the text, plus extensive image links.
Covers the artistic traditions of the world's leading cultures, countries, cities, towns, and regions as well as important archaeological sites, monuments, and buildings. Includes over 45,000 signed articles on every aspect of the visual arts from prehistory through the present as well as over 40,000 web links to important art images in galleries and museums around the world. Both the fine arts (painting, sculpture, and architecture) and the decorative arts (ceramics, textiles, jewellery, interior design, furniture, glass, metalwork, and more) are included.
We have a limited number of users for this database. Please select the logout option before you leave your session. If you see a username and password prompt, simply wait 15 minutes and then try the link again.
Oxford Bibliographies Online
Coverage varies. Unlimited.
These Bibliographies provide an authoritative guide to the current scholarship, expert recommendations and authoritative commentary on the best works available in the discipline covered, making them particularly useful for anyone beginning research.
UT Austin has access to the all bibliographies in all subject areas.
New York Times Online
1851 - present. Unlimited.

Access restricted to current UT Austin students, faculty, and staff only. New users MUST register first for free access! See our Instructions for creating your NYT account.

Access includes more than 150 years of articles, breaking news, multimedia content, Times newsletters, the International, Spanish, and Chinese editions of the Times, and teaching and learning tools. Our subscription also includes access to the NYT Cooking, Games, and The Athletic.

After creating your account, access articles, video, audio, digital images of the newspaper back to 1851, and more through the New York Times.com and the NYT mobile app.

The New York Times, published in New York City since 1851, is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States. The New York Times has long been an important source of reporting, information and opinion, covering politics, finance, health, science, culture, the arts, sports, and fashion in the U.S. and abroad, with special emphasis on the New York metropolitan area.

Subject Databases

The databases listed below include subject specific databases for art, design, architecture, education, science and business. These databases cover some of the areas you may need to research for a design project.

Art and Architecture Source
1929 - present (full text varies by title). Unlimited users.
The collection includes over 600 full-text journals, 200 full-text books, and a collection of over 63,000 images. Provides the most up-to-date coverage of fine and decorative arts, commercial art, architecture, archaeology, design, and museum studies. An ideal tool for art historians, artists, designers, students, and general researchers.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
1934 (with selective coverage back to 1741) - current. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Indexes more than 2,000 periodicals published worldwide on architecture and design, archaeology, city planning, interior design, and historic preservation. Avery indexes not only the international scholarly and popular periodical literature, but also the publications of professional associations, U.S. state and regional periodicals, and the major serial publications on architecture and design of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Includes obituary citations.
Bibliography of the History of Art
1973 - 2007. Unlimited users.
Updated quarterly. Covers European and American art from late antiquity to the present and contemporary art worldwide. Indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealer's catalogs, and articles from more than 2,500 periodicals. Bibliography of the History of Art includes and extends the coverage of its two predecessor art indexes: RAA (Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeologie) and RILA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art).
Business Source Complete
1990 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. A scholarly business database providing a collection of bibliographic and full text content in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Indexing and abstracts for scholarly business journals back to 1886 are included.

Searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals. Contains detailed author profiles for the 20,000 most-cited authors in the database.

Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, and SWOT analyses.
DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index
1973 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. All areas of design and craft are covered, including industrial design, vehicle design, architecture, interior design, environmental design, computer aided design, furniture design, ceramics, glass, jewellery, metalsmithing, silversmithing, goldsmithing, fashion design, textile design, embroidery, graphic design, typography, multimedia design, illustration, book design, photography, advertising, marketing, retail design, packaging, exhibition design, theatre design, design and craft history, design and craft theory, ergonomics, design for disability, design for the elderly, design and craft education and design management.
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
1850 - 1920. Unlimited users.
Presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.
Google Scholar
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.
Material Connexion
Coverage varies. Unlimited.
Material Connexion is the world’s leading material resource allowing users to browse thousands of innovative and sustainable materials from over 6000 manufacturers, learn about trending topics in materials, and source materials for projects.
Material Order
Coverage varies. Unlimited users.
Material Order is an open access, multi-institution database of material sample collections (including wood, metal, glass, ceramic, polymers, plastics, textiles, bio-materials, etc.) and a knowledge-base of compositions, uses, forms, properties, and processes. The academic consortium provides a federated search across participating institutions, including Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard, Columbia, and University of Michigan.
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Provides access to the full text of journals published by Elsevier and its subsidiaries and other publishers whose online journals are hosted by ScienceDirect.

Books: Selected titles from Elsevier and its subsidiaries are included. These books are DRM-free with unlimited users and PDF chapter downloads/printing.
Web of Science
1900 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. The Web of Science Core Collection is a group of databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present) that together cover more than 21,000 journals across all disciplines. The Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present) tracks thousands of additional journals that are being considered for inclusion in the main citation indexes. Other files track references from conference proceedings (1990-present) and citations to books (2005-present).
The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.

Find News and Newspapers

Search for Newspapers

Nexis Uni
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated continually. Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an interface that offers discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
New York Times (Historical)
Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue
Updated annually. Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements.
More recent years are also available in other full text resources.

More Subject Databases

Want to find more subject databases at UT?

Click here for a list, which you can refine by discipline.