The Getty Art History Information Program website is now "vocabulary
enriched."
http://www.ahip.getty.edu/aka
"aka," developed by Getty AHIP, is an experiment in using vocabulary
resources to provide enhanced access to AHIP#s cultural information
databases. "aka" allows users to search thousands of records
simultaneously, with the added option of using the Union List of Artist
Names (ULAN) and Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). These
vocabularies can now be used as retrieval tools to broaden or narrow
searches by including or excluding variant and alternate terms and
names. The ULAN is a database of 200,000 names of artists and
architects, with related biographical information and bibliographic
citations. The AAT is a comprehensive vocabulary of nearly 110,000
terms in art, architecture, and related fields, organized in 33 hierarchies.
The four Getty databases that are available for searching on the AHIP
website are:
1. International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA) [1975-1989]
Published between 1975 and 1989, RILA provides abstracts of
worldwide literature (books, periodical articles, conference
proceedings, exhibition catalogues, doctoral dissertations, etc.) on
Western art from late antiquity to the present. The searchable database
contains nearly 135,000 records representing the full 15 volumes of
RILA that were published before its 1990 merger with its French
counterpart, the R#pertoire d#Art et d#Arch#ologie (RAA).
2. Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals (Avery)
A comprehensive database of periodical literature on architecture,
containing nearly 133,000 records for journal articles indexed between
1977 and 1994, published by G.K. Hall as "Avery Index on Disc."
3. Provenance Index Sale Catalogues
Information about British sale catalogues from 1801 to 1825, including a
general description of each sale (2,812 sales are included) and a list of
where copies of the catalogues are available and how they are
annotated.
4. Provenance Index Sale Contents
This database dedicated to the paintings listed in the Sale Catalogues
contains 173,637 records, which can be searched by artist#s name, title,
seller, price, buyer, etc. This information appears in print form in the
multi-volume series "Index of Paintings Sold in the British Isles during the
Nineteenth Century."