Internet resources for Art

VIA is a growing online union catalogue at Harvard
University Library, documenting the arts, material
culture,
and social history. It contains descriptive records and
images representing paintings, sculpture, photography,
drawings, prints, architecture, decorative arts, trade
cards, rubbings, theater designs, maps and plans from
participating archives, museums, libraries, and other
collections throughout Harvard University. Included are
thousands of digital images on China, Japan, and Korea.

This database project studies the first wave of postcards
with a Chinese subject. Users not only find images of the
postcards, but also their historical context information
about what they are, who produced them and where, how they
were used, and what's their significance. The growing
collection focuses on early (1896-1920) postcards of China
with the bulk back to the time of the late imprial (before
1911). It has stopped updating in 2004 and the 462 images
the site hosts are available to view and download.

The goal of the Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies
[IDEAS] is to unify digitizing efforts already in progress
at various campuses into a shared searchable database,
open
to anyone with access to the World Wide Web. IDEAS focuses
on the generally underrepresented area of Asia in an
attempt
to make multi-media materials more widely available for
specialists and non-specialists alike. IDEAS is the first
multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, pan-Asian
searchable
database in the country.

The Ming dynasty Chinese painters and paintings index is a
searchable dataset that continues James Cahill's print
publication \An index of early Chinese painters and
paintings: T'ang

This is a collection of Chinese films in the
Moving Image Archive (of the Internet Archive).

The Internet resources guide at the Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology includes 450+ entries that cover art,
history, politics and other aspects of traditional and
contemporary China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It
is keyword searchable and annotated.

The project brings treasures from the NPM collection to you
using websites offering thematic introductions. These
thematic websites all provide a full array of visual and
textual materials on artworks as well as various functions
for appreciating them. This is done so in the hope of
creating a multiple learning environment that will yield
greater study and research benefits as well as reach the
goal of digitized educational and promotional efforts.

The HKUL Digital Initiatives have implemented digitization
projects that are now providing open online access to local
collections originally in print format. These include Basic
Law Drafting History Online, Beijing Historical Geography
Database, China through Western Eyes, Historical Laws of
Hong Kong Online, Hong Kong and the West until 1860, Hong
Kong Government Reports Online (1853-1941) and Hong Kong
Journals Online.

This digital collection includes more than 200,000
photographs of art and architecture from throughout Asia.
The countries included in this collection are Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar (Burma),
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

The International Collections database showcases some of
the visual materials held by the Special Collections
Division
that focus on collections beyond the scope of the Pacific
Northwest region. In this digital collection we feature
selected photographs and postcards from Asia and South
America including scenes from China, India, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Japan, 1870s-1930s. Represented are
historical events, typical street scenes and native people
in traditional dress.

The International Dunhuang Project is an international
digitization project that aims to promote the study and
preservation of manuscripts
and printed documents from Dunhuang and other Central Asian
sites through global cooperation. Beginning in 1994, IDP has
till now made tens of thousands of images together with
catalogues, translations, historical photographs,
archaeological site plans and much
more freely available to all on the Internet.

The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) contains more
than 9,615 works (25,115 volumes totaling over ten million
digital pages), making this online repository one of the
most extensive collections of Tibetan literature.

Following the successful completion in August 2002 of a
project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme,
there now exists a UK Union Catalogue of Chinese Books
containing records from the British Library, Cambridge,
Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and SOAS. Particular
attention has been paid to the development of a simple and
intuitive search interface, enabling readers to gain rapid
access to the required information through the entry of
minimal search terms.