LibGuides: HIST 137: Material Culture in China: Primary Sources: Material Culture

Library Primary Source Databases and Collections

The Tufts libraries provide access to a wide array of primary source materials on the material culture of China. Explore these resources to find images, descriptions, texts, and much more on this topic.

ARTstor
ARTstor is an image database of architecture, painting, photography, sculpture, decorative arts and design, and archaeological and anthropological objects--with associated catalog data--from many major collections.
Artifact
Image study website of the Tufts Department of Art & Art History. Select Arts of China to view a wide array of images from Chinese material culture.

Trove
Image study website of the Tufts Department of Art & Art History.

Publicly Available Primary Source Databases and Collections

There is an increasing amount of digitized primary source materials available on the web from libraries, museums, educational institutions, and more. Explore these resources to find texts, images, and much more on this topic.

Asia at Work - Asia Collection
Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa: This site features digitizing photographs, drawings, and paintings in books published from the early 20th century and before.
British Museum Images
One of the oldest, largest and famous museums in the world, the British Museum Images holds over 6,000 images in its database, including a wealth of images of Chinese art and other materials.
Digital Public Library of America
U.S. project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings (maps, manuscripts, monographs) as a public digital library.
Lian Huan Hua Collection, Asia Collection
Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa: Lian Huan Hua literarlly means "linked serial pictures." They are pocket sized picture-story books first published by a Shanghai publisher in the 1920s. The Library has collected more than 150 titles of lian huan hua that were published mostly during the Cultural Revolution, particularly between 1971-1976, when the publication of lian huan hua was rare and difficult at that time.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
One of the largest digital collections in the world, the site is suitable for anyone seeking images as primary sources reflecting Chinese, Chinese-American, Asian, or Asian-American histories.
The National Palace Museum Digital Archives
Provided by the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, this site contains a variety of image and text databases; many covering biographical studies, historical archives, digital images of relics and paintings from Taiwan and China.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
The Digital Collection provides free and open access to over 800,000 images from the Library’s collections. These digital images include photographs, posters, documents, maps, manuscripts and other source materials in many academic fields. These resources can cover China and other countries in Asia as well.
Princeton University Online Catalog of Shadow Figures
The Princeton University East Asian Library has just released a fully searchable, image-rich, free online catalog of its collection of Chinese shadow figures. The catalog includes photographs of each of the over 2,000 items in the collection, along with searchable categories and descriptions.
Smithsonian Collections Search Center
"The Smithsonian Collections Search Center is an online catalog containing most of Smithsonian's major collections from our museums, archives, libraries, and research units. There are 8.1 million catalog records relating to areas for Art & Design,History & Culture, and Science & Technology with 860,477 images, videos, audio files, podcasts, blog posts and electronic journals."
Yin Yu Tang: A Chinese Home
Yin Yu Tang, a late Qing dynasty merchants' house, was originally located in southeastern China. Re-erected at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, Yin Yu Tang is now open to visitors. Explore the house in person or online to discover this rare example of the region's renowned architecture and to learn about the daily life of the Huang family, who lived in Yin Yu Tang for over 200 years. The online display includes high-quality images of a wide array of objects owned by this family over the years.
Yale Silk Road
The Yale Silk Road Database presents over 11,000 images of major sites in the Silk Road region taken during faculty site seminars led by Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan (Professor, History of Art) under the auspices of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in the summers of 2006-2010. The collection serves as a multi-disciplinary resource with relevance to students and faculty working in the fields of art and archaeology, religious studies, history, East Asian languages and literatures, Central Asian and Islamic studies.
NPM: National Palace Museum Digital Archive of Chinese Treasures 故宮線上
NPM is an essential resource for the studies of Chinese art and art history. Since the previous vendor Airiti Inc. of Taiwan is no longer presenting the database, this is the complimentary public access to the NPM resource.
Chinese Culture
Compiled by Haiwang Yuan of Western Kentucky University, this site includes a number of links to high-quality Chinese cultural sources on the web.

Find Primary Sources in JumboSearch

JumboSearch can be used to find books, articles, films, and other resources from Tisch Library. You can even customize your search results to return primary source material if you combine select subject terms with your other search terms.

Click on a subject term below to search for that subject term in in JumboSearch. Then, add your own keywords to search for the primary sources you need.