Digital Resources for Chinese Studies

9. Photographs and Images

The following guides and resources may be helpful in finding visual materials, especially photographs and art works, of East Asia held at Harvard or elsewhere.

Not all photographs, artworks, and other images held at Harvard are included in HOLLIS or VIA. Many reference works are only in print. Please consult with staff at specific libraries for more information about visual materials. For Harvard-Yenching Library, the primary contact for photographic collections is Raymond Lum, Librarian for the Western-languages Collection; please also contact Xiao-he Ma, Librarian for the Chinese Collection. At the Fine Arts Library, Nanni Deng is the Asian Art Bibliographer. For more contemporary images, you may also wish to contact Nancy Hearst, Librarian for the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Collection in the Fung Library.

National Palace Museum Online database 故宮線上 Full View/Short View

National Palace Museum (NPM) Online displays photo images and related description articles of art pieces in NPM collection.  Currently about 12,000 images are included and can be viewed in Traditional/Simplified Chinese, English and Japanese.  It contains finest antiques of painting, calligraphy, ceramics, jade, bronze, Buddhist antiques and rarities. 

Finding Images of East Asia at Harvard and Beyond Full View/Short View

Overview of East Asia-related photographs and other visual resources held at Harvard and elsewhere. The focus is primarily on historical photographs, although information on other types of images is included selectively.



Photographica : Research Guide for Photography@Harvard Full View/Short View

Introduces a wide range of resources for photographs available at Harvard and elsewhere. Includes databases, web sites, print reference tools, exhibition information, course listings, and much else.



Introductory Guide to Research in History of Art & Architecture Full View/Short View

These selected resources provide a basis for electronic research on topics in the history of art and architecture. While electronic resources have simplified some aspects of research in this discipline, such as searching many years of periodical literature indexes simultaneously, other important research resources are available only in printed form.

VIA (Visual Information Access) Full View/Short View

Union catalog of visual resources at Harvard, focusing on artistic and cultural materials.

Note: OASIS does not currently have CJK capability. All searches for East Asian terms must be entered in romanization.



A Directory of Photographs at Harvard Full View/Short View

Provides descriptions of photographic holdings at institutions across Harvard, including many on East Asia.



The Hedda Morrison Photographs of China, 1933-1946 Full View/Short View

All of the photographs contained in the 28 albums assembled by Hedda Morrison and beaqueathed to Harvard-Yenching Library have been cataloged and digitized and can be viewed in VIA (Visual Information Access), the union catalog of visual resources at Harvard. This site provides information about the collection and strategies for effectively searching for Hedda Morrison photographs in VIA.



Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China Full View/Short View

A collection of materials relating to Muslims in western China and Christian missionaries working among them in the 1920s and 1930s. A finding aid to the entire collection of Rev. Pickens, an American Episcopal missionary in pre-revolutionary China, may be found in OASIS (Online Archival Search Information System). Portions of the collection, including posters, prints, manuscript items, scrolls, and some 1,000 photographs are viewable in VIA (Visual Information Access) with item-level description.



South Central China and Tibet: Hotspot of Diversity Full View/Short View

Information about and images of expeditions, people, and flora from early and late twentieth-century China and Tibet.



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Next: 10. Library Catalogs, East Asian Collections, and Interlibrary Loan

Page Last Reviewed: February 18, 2011