Basic Reference Tools
This research guide is divided into two sections. This section presents online and printed bibliographies, indexes, and other reference works and surveys organized according to subject or artistic medium (e.g. Architecture; Arts of the Book; Ceramics; Metalwork; Museums and Collections, etc.).
General Resources
Harvard Libraries
- Fine Arts LibraryMany of the reference works listed here are in the Fine Arts Library, shelved in the reading room [RFA call nos.] or in the stacks [FAL-LC, FA, and Fogg call nos.].
- Widener LibraryHarvard Library’s flagship location, Widener Library offers inspiring study spaces, miles of stacks to explore, and friendly librarians ready to help. It boasts 450 languages collected and 6 million+ items digitized.
- Frances Loeb LibraryThe Frances Loeb Library provides the Graduate School of Design, the larger Harvard University community, and the public with resources and services for design research, teaching, and learning.
- Tozzer LibraryTozzer's anthropology and archaeology collections are some of the most comprehensive and oldest in the world.
- Islamic Legal Studies Reference CollectionSome important reference works in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies can also be found in the Islamic Legal Studies reference collection of the Harvard Law School Library.
- Islamic Heritage ProjectThe Islamic Heritage Project of the Harvard Library's Open Collections Program provides online access to digital copies of over 280 manuscripts, 275 printed texts, and 50 maps, totaling over 156,000 pages. Users can search or browse online materials dating from medieval times to the present and representing many regions, languages, and subjects.
Affiliate Libraries
- Rotch Library of Architecture and PlanningThe Aga Khan Program at MIT also supports a Documentation Center for research in Islamic architecture at MIT's Rotch Library of Architecture & Planning. Harvard and MIT affiliates have reciprocal access to library collections at both institutions.
- Aga Khan Documentation CenterThe Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) is a research center focused on the built environment of Muslim societies, broadly defined. AKDC@MIT supports teaching of and scholarship on the history and theory of architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation.
- Princeton Digital Library of Islamic ManuscriptsManuscripts of the Islamic World offers a curated selection of extraordinary manuscripts hosted or held by Princeton University Library. The manuscripts are predominantly in Arabic, but there are also many in Persian and Ottoman Turkish.