20 March 2023
Bloomsbury Digital Resources has launched Bloomsbury Visual Arts, a digital hub which brings its leading online visual arts collections together onto one cross-searchable platform, to support an interdisciplinary approach to study, teaching, and research.
At its launch, the Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub comprises Bloomsbury Design Library, Bloomsbury Applied Visual Arts, and Bloomsbury International Encyclopedia of Surrealism. It is also home to an exclusive new collection, Bloomsbury Art Markets, which comprehensively examines the commercial side of art.
Years in the making and involving a team of expert scholars and art professionals led by Editor-In-Chief Johannes Nathan, Bloomsbury Art Markets provides a landmark international directory of art galleries, auction houses, art fairs, and agents from multiple national and historical contexts, from 1900 to the present. Scholars, researchers and art professionals can explore over 2,200 entries (with a total of 4000 to come overall) on the protagonists, provenances, and networks that have shaped the global reception of artists and their artworks.
The collections on Bloomsbury Visual Arts have been designed to fit together seamlessly so that access to any combination of them provides a rich experience for users of all levels. They span a diverse range of content types including textbooks, reference, primary material, monographs, pedagogical tools, and multimedia.
Existing users and administrators of the visual arts collections that are migrating to the new hub will be able to access all of the same high-quality content as before but will benefit from an enhanced experience. For users, this includes a new bespoke taxonomy designed in response to user research to support ease of navigation and discovery across collections or closely related subject areas.
Administrators can purchase any combination of collections to tailor their version of the hub to suit their institution’s needs. Subscription sensitivity is also now available, ensuring that users only see the collections to which they have access.
Future collections will include Bloomsbury Architecture Library, Architecture Design and Practice, Vernacular Architecture Reference Collection, the Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, Applied Gaming, Animation Practice, Photography, Design Studies, Ceramics, Printmaking, and more.
Interdisciplinary down to an art, the Bloomsbury Visual Arts digital hub provides an engaging, one-stop study and research environment, designed with the needs of both users and administrators at its heart.
It is available to institutions via two models: a one-time ‘perpetual access’ payment or via an annual subscription. www.bloomsburyvisualarts.com