The Royal Institute of British Architects’ Web site is an immense resource. It contains approximately 250,000 pages of useful information about architecture, architects and the RIBA itself. Within the Web site is the RIBA Online Library Catalogue which contains about 214,000 catalogue records for a portion of the entire RIBA British Architectural Library holdings. This catalogue is free to use and is a marvellous bibliographical reference tool. The catalogue is updated daily and up to 1,500 records are added each year. The database is made up of a catalogue of the books and audio visual materials within the RIBA Library; an index to over 300 journals covering all aspects of architecture and the built environment; the RIBA Library Photographs Collection catalogue; the RIBA Library Drawings Collection catalogue; the RIBA Library Manuscripts Collection catalogue; and a biographical database of architects.
Access points used to search the database are; author, title, subject, name of architect, name of building and journal title. Any combination of these search criteria may be used. There is a facility to include Boolean operators in order to link these access points. It is possible also to limit one’s search to a facet of the catalogue for example to search only the Manuscripts Collection. The search interface is well designed although lacking the stylish atmosphere of some other parts of the site.
Having performed a number of compound queries I found the system to be thoroughly robust. The cataloguing of materials has been carried out to an extremely high standard and returned records give a lot of detail. Significantly the various catalogues have been matched seamlessly despite their format, into a single searchable resource. This feat is also notable given the increasingly diverse subject area of architecture. Most impressive are the journal article entries which dovetail very well into the overall search system.
The overall RIBA Web site is of great interest and certainly merits a close inspection for those even remotely related to the art and science of architecture.
