Bloomsbury Design Library provides cutting-edge scholarly coverage of design and crafts worldwide, from 1500 BCE to the present day.
It offers an expanding range of authoritative reference and book content, alongside a rich selection of museum object images, which are fully searchable and underpinned by an intuitive taxonomy for seamless navigation.
The ideal research and learning tool for design and visual arts, its coverage includes graphic, product and industrial design, and important themes such as sustainability, globalisation and design futures. Users can also discover a vast array of content on crafts and making, ceramics and art history. It will support both students and academics by allowing them to explore the theory, history and context of influential design schools, people, periods, places, and disciplines.
Bloomsbury Design Library is available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access. New and updated content is made available annually, and institutions can request a 30-day free trial.
Bloomsbury Design Library offers cross-searchable access to a broad range of reference works, e-books, images, exhibitions collections, and more:
The landmark, 3-volume Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design – including an expanding range of peer-reviewed articles with comprehensive coverage of design history and theory, written by leading international scholars
World History of Design – a multi-volume work by eminent design historian, Victor Margolin, covering a history of global design from prehistoric times to the end of World War II
17 online exclusive articles from the Encyclopedia of Asian Design, the first publication to provide authoritative coverage of design and craft practice across Greater Asia
The Encyclopedia of East Asian Design, the first comprehensive publication to focus on East Asian design and its histories, divided by country to reflect specific regional and national histories and geographies
Over 100 books in design and craft studies by leading scholars including Glenn Adamson, Tony Fry, John Heskett, Penny Sparke, Judith Attfield and Nigel Cross
Museum collections, with over 2,000 images featuring a range of forms from the Museum of Arts and Design in New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s extensive collection of costume and textiles; and textile, glasswork, and other designs from The National Archives, UK
Exhibition archives providing essential information and images from key museum exhibitions including the Designmuseum Danmark and the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco
Exclusive lesson plans and bibliographic guides to help users navigate key content, with inspiration to bolster course teaching, and thematic guides to introduce core readings on individual topics
More than 100 Designer Pages providing essential details and links to further reading about key figures including Ettore Sottsass, William Morris, Charles Eames and Ray Kaiser Eames
An interactive timeline providing an illustrated and linked overview of global design and crafts history, within its social, technological, economic, and cultural context
Coming Soon
New design books
New articles for the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design
Additional chapters for the World History of Design: Volume III
New lesson plans and bibliographic guides
Call for contributors
The Bloomsbury Design Library is seeking new contributors – we are looking for new content for our ever-popular bibliographic guides and lessons plans, as well as new encyclopedia entries and designer biographies. If you’re interested in submitting an idea, please fill in the relevant form below and we’ll be in touch shortly.
