LibGuides: Ebooks: Visual & Performing Arts

Which e-book collection do I choose?

What if I want to search everything?
Most of our e-book titles are listed in UC Library Search. If you search a topic there, you will uncover items in our e-book collections, along with all other materials (print books, journal titles, government reports, etc).

What if I only want to search among all our e-books?
If you'd like only to see and search among all the e-books in our collections, then search the Library Catalog rather than Articles, Books and More, and then limit by resource type to Books and/or Book chapters. In this way, you may search a topic across all of the packages listed here to the right, but in one place.

So why choose from among the collections here?
Picking a specific e-book package lets you search fulltext of the entire book, across all the books in the package. Depending on your topic, this fulltext search can be an advantage.

Tip: When you search in the Library's catalog, you are only searching the books' titles, subject headings, notes/tables of contents, and publisher details. It is not a search of the entire contents of each e-book.

Frequently, someone will start in the catalog, and get an idea of which e-book collection holds the most content for their topic, then localize into that ebook package for more in-depth searching.

The way you can tell which collection an e-book is 1) if there's an orange "Available Online" note in the search results, or 2) within the actual record, you'll see a View Online box with one or more links under "Full Text Availability."

If you have any questions about your topic or searching for items, please contact us for more help specific to your unique research topic.

Visual & Performing Arts Ebook Collections

The resources listed here include e-books on topics like architecture, acting, art in various media, design, film, movies, music, photography and theater.

Academic Search Complete
ASC is a multidisciplinary database that primarily provides coverage of academic journals, but it also contains a growing number e-books.
ACLS Humanities eBooks
Full-text and full-page-image access more than 3300 books in the humanities and area studies, recommended by scholars as significant contributions to their respective fields. From the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

Asian American Drama (Alexander Street)
Asian American Drama contains 186 plays by 35 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more.

Berg Fashion Library
The Berg Fashion Library includes 13,000 images, the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, free lesson plans, ~150 eBooks, reference works, an interactive timeline, a new exhibition archive, and more. Provides integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. Browsable by time period and by place.
Our subscription does not include the Fairchild Books Library.

CRCnetBASE
CRC Press' e-book collections are primarily based in the sciences, however it touches on the engineering, chemistry and environmental science aspects of architecture, music and the visual arts (e.g. forensic painting analysis, ergonomics and human-computer interaction, the mathematics of music, aesthetics and engineering). Not all CRCnetBASE collections are licensed by UCSD.
Early English Books Online - EEBO
Containing digitized full text versions of over 100,000 books printed in England or in English between 1475 and 1700, EEBO is an invaluable resource for locating primary texts in the areas of literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, education, mathematics, the arts and the sciences.
Gu jin tu shu ji cheng 古今圖書集成
http://uclibs.org/PID/113712
Contains searchable full-text and scanned images of important classics from ancient China to the Qing Dynasty; includes works on astronomy, geography, history, philosophy, literature, politics, economics, art, education, agriculture, medicine, and more.
Images of America (Alexander Street)
Built on Arcadia Publishing's large and ongoing book series of local town and community histories, on completion it will include over 1 million digitized historical images and texts.
JSTOR
Over 32,000 scholarly books now integrated within the popular and powerful JSTOR platform, searchable, viewable, and downloadable as chapters alongside the articles.

Knovel
This collection of 3,000+ texts, handbooks, encyclopedias and databases are primarily engineering-focused, but for the arts, it contains e-books related to any scientific aspect of the arts, such as materials, optics, sound, lighting, ecological design, product design, computer graphics. There are special concentrations in the subject of textiles and materials conservation.

Latino Literature
Latino Literature contains approximately 380 plays and 67,500 pages of prose and poetry by Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican and other Latin writers working in the United States.
LGBT Thought & Culture (Alexander Press)
LGBT Thought and Culture includes key works of the LGBT political and social movements from 1900-present in many formats (texts, plays, comics, books of photography, speeches, letters, interviews, etc). Its e-book content features select rare works from notable LGBT publishers, including Alyson Books and Cleis Press, as well as mainstream publishers, and winners of both the Stonewall Book Awards and Lambda Literary Awards, many of which are no longer in print.
Literature Online (LiON)
A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama, and prose. See a full list of its e-book content.
Springer
Over 40,000 books primarily covering numerous fields of science & engineering, but including some items on architecture and design. Titles from 2005-present can be bought at a discounted price of $24.95 - look for MyCopy.
Taiwan wen xian cong kan 臺灣文獻叢刊
Also known as the Encyclopedia of Taiwan. Contains searchable full-text and scanned images of 595 books originally published in print between 1959 and 1972. Temporal coverage from the Tang Dynasty to the Japanese occupation period.
UC Press ebooks Collection (1982-2004)
This collection includes almost 2,000 books from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, art history, architecture, music, dance, and ethnomusicology. Access to the entire collection of electronic books is open to all University of California faculty, staff, and students, and more than 500 of the titles are available to the public. Browse by subject.

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is a scholarly, primary source database focusing on adult comic books and graphic novels.

Wiley
1,300+ e-books, with strong emphasis on the sciences, but including architecture and design, and art and applied arts. The UC's purchased all 2011 & 2012 e-books, plus selected titles from 2010 and earlier.

Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000
This database of digitized books, images, documents, essays and bibiographies documents women's reform activities in the U.S., mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries, and includes materials related to art, acting, dance, fashion & style, movies, music & musicians, television, plays and playrights.