Skip to main content
LibApps staff login

Design Resources

Key resources to support design research at Arizona State University

Selected List of Image Databases

Ad*Access

Presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University.

ARTstor Digital Library

The ARTstor Digital Library is comprised of digital images and related data and the tools to make active use of those images. The Collection contains approximately 300,000 digital images of visual material from different cultures and disciplines.
The collection documents artistic traditions across many times and cultures and embraces architecture, decorative arts, painting, sculpture, photography, and design -- as well as many other forms of visual culture.
ARTstor contains the following collections:

  • Interdisciplinary Topics: Design & Decorative Studies
  • Museum of Modern Art, Architecture, and Design Collection
  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

American Memory (The Library of Congress)

Gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States.
The site offers more than 5 million items from more than 90 historical collections - including these selected image collections:

Sample American Memory keyword search: 

 

Contains over 9,000 images that illustrate the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States. It covers images, broadsides, leaflets, post cards, cook books, flyers, ephemera.

The ASU Library acknowledges the twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Arizona State University's four campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today. ASU Library acknowledges the sovereignty of these nations and seeks to foster an environment of success and possibility for Native American students and patrons. We are advocates for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary library practice. ASU Library welcomes members of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh, and all Native nations to the Library.