As we head into the last quarter of 2023, we’ve been getting inquiries from researchers about what is “exclusive” to Paratext’s Eight Centuries. As a response, we’re reaching back into our blog archive to republish some posts on sources and methodologies that remain just as relevant today as when they were first posted. This article, originally published in August 2018, looks at a sometimes-overlooked genre of historical source: political cartoons. Though(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce a new source available to your patrons. Now ready to search in Eight Centuries: the Tate Collection. Founded in 1897 and originally named the National Gallery of British Art, the Tate has since grown into a four gallery institution spread across the UK, from London to Liverpool and Cornwall. The Tate Collection in Eight Centuries contains records for the nearly 70,000 objects that comprise the holdings of the museum. Links to the Tate catalog in each record(read more)

Another recent addition to Eight Centuries is now ready to search by your patrons: the Art Institute of Chicago Catalog. Founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the premier art institutions in the United States. The catalog searchable in Eight Centuries contains over 120,000 records describing artworks from as far back as the ancient world and as recent as the contemporary period. Links to catalog entries on the Art Institute website are provided, which include full images(read more)

Another recent addition to Eight Centuries is now ready to search by your patrons: records of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access Collection. Founded in 1870 in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in the world with a collection stretching over 5,000 years of world art history. The Met OA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises over 200 thousand records, containing links to catalog entries, as well as image links where(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to Eight Centuries: records of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Collection in New York City. Founded in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art is one of the world’s premier collections of art from the modern period and beyond. The MoMA collection in Eight Centuries contains records to artworks dating from the eighteenth century to the present day. The MoMA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises nearly 140 thousand records,(read more)

Paratext is happy to announce another recent addition to Eight Centuries: records of the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection. Founded in 1913, the Cleveland Museum of Art remains one of the premier public art institutions in the United States. The CMA’s collection stretches from the ancient British Isles and Egypt to contemporary artists working in the twenty-first century. The CMA collection searchable in Eight Centuries comprises nearly 64 thousand records, containing links to(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that data from the Walters Art Museum’s “Digital Walters” manuscript collection is now accessible via Eight Centuries. This data—made available through the museum’s Digital Walters initiative—comprises over 150,000 records of folio that make up the nearly 900 illuminated medieval manuscripts in the Walters collection. Records includes full text links leading to high resolution scans of each page. Explore the Islamic world,(read more)

The primary source is the historian’s most prized asset. However, sources taken on their own are not necessarily interesting; it is how the researcher can see in them and through them, placing them in context to piece together historical narrative, that makes them intriguing. When used effectively, sources can truly be windows into history, and—like windows—they can be clear, dirty, foggy, even distorted and deceptive. Political cartoons are an example of a relatively(read more)

Cambridge University Press is the oldest publishing house in the world (1534) and continues to produce high quality scholarly publications in all research areas. Paratext added 700 additional Major Reference Works, including the famed Cambridge Histories to the vast introductory metadata of Reference Universe.       (read more)

Oxford University Press remains at the vanguard of authoritative and creative major reference publishing. As such, it has established a singular profile within Paratext’s Reference Universe, the unified online resource for searching; augmenting; weeding; and utilizing Major Reference Works. This week, Paratext has supplemented the OUP profile with an additional 1.7 million article level links to 263 new Oxford Major Reference titles. 555 reference titles(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that extensive content from Adam Matthew is now accessible via 19th Century Masterfile: 1106-1930. Adam Matthew, an imprint of SAGE, is an award-winning publisher of digital primary source collections for the humanities and social sciences, covering subject areas from medieval family life to 20th-century history and culture. Nearly 100,000 links from 33 collections are being added to 19th Century Masterfile’s Image/Media section, broadening research(read more)

Many bibliographers and scholars using 19th Century Masterfile have asked for expanded coverage of the visual arts. To that end, we're very happy to announce that Graves’ Indexes to Art Exhibitions 1760-1912 is now completely digitized and online in 19th Century Masterfile. Graves’ indexes are a seminal resource not only for the study of art, but for users from numerous scholarly disciplines. These indexes offer the researcher opportunities(read more)

Paratext is pleased to announce that detailed metadata from Grove Art Online and Grove Music Online from Oxford University Press are now integrated into Reference Universe. Many current Reference Universe libraries tell us that these titles are among the most heavily used within their library. Their inclusion within Reference Universe ensures increased accessibility to some of the most authoritative articles on art and music available. Grove Art(read more)

Paratext announces that hundreds of thousands of citations from the ARTstor Digital Library will be indexed and integrated into Paratext’s 19th Century Masterfile database, allowing historians and scholars from many disciplines to expand their art history research. The ARTstor Digital Library is a nonprofit resource that provides more than one million digital images in a variety of subjects. The Digital Library serves educators, scholars, curators,(read more)