Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Oxford Companion to the Photograph
This extensive book examines photography as a social and artistic practice. Contains entries on photographers and on others who have influenced photographic culture from the nineteenth century to the present.

Also available in print at the E.J. Pratt Library in the reference collection on the main floor.

Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography
Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being “a solution in search of a problem” when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century.

Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography
Examines the aesthetic history of photography as an evolving art and documentary form, while also recognizing it as a developing technology and cultural force. This reference sources presents the important developments, movements, photographers, photographic institutions, and theoretical aspects of the field along with information about equipment, techniques, and practical applications of photography.

Periodical Index

Art Full Text
A major database for art information. Art Abstracts covers fine, decorative and commercial art, photography, folk art, film and architecture. A unique feature of the database is the indexing of art reproductions to help researchers focus on a single artist or find individual works.