Description of the Collections

Hillyer Art Library provides broad-based coverage of the history, theory, criticism, and practice of the visual arts. Its collections include over 110,000 volumes, 38,000 microforms, and 225 current serials subscriptions to support teaching and research in almost all fields of art. Drawing on a long tradition of vigorous collection development, Renaissance art and architecture and Greek, Roman, Asian, and Medieval art are areas of special collection strength.

While printed sources--books, exhibition catalogs, microformat publications, and periodicals--continue to form its most important collections, Hillyer Art Library has significant holdings of other materials as well. Electronic versions of all of the major indexing and abstracting services for current visual arts literature are available through the Smith College Libraries Art & Architecture Resources Page, as are other Internet-based resources.

Special Resources

Hillyer Art Library's extensive microform holdings include items such as American Architectural Books, which reproduces almost 1,500 books, portfolios, and pamphlets published in the United States before 1895, and the Marburger Index, a massive microfiche collection reproducing the entire holdings of the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg--920,000 photographs of works in German collections--paintings, sculptures, and decorative art works from all countries and time periods--as well as German architecture. Another of Hillyer’s notable microfiche resources is the Biblioteca Cicognara, which reproduces the 5,000-item library collected by Conte Leopoldo Cicognara and acquired by the Vatican Library in 1824. It includes books, treatises, and pamphlets on art history, theory, criticism, and practice, as well as on related subjects such as archaeology, museology, costume, and emblems, all of which date from between antiquity and the early nineteenth century.

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