Historic preservationists and architectural historians may want to consult specialized literature, including trade publications, in architecture, architectural history, and related fields.
Art & Architecture Source is the largest full-text art research database covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design. With strong international coverage, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts and thousands of images.
JSTOR is a digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and diverse primary sources. FSU has access to JSTOR’s Archive, Artstor, Primary Sources, and Global Plants collections.
There are many primary source materials that may be useful for doing original research on a building or landscape. Sites that already have a historic designation or have been researched for potential inclusion on such lists may be found on national and state level registries.
Many companies market genealogy databases for researching one's family tree. These often include census registers; vital records like birth, marriage, and death certificates; immigration records; and newspapers. Some will allow searching for free, but most require a subscription available by the month or year.
FSU Libraries is not able to provide access to these services. However, the Leon County Public Library and the State Library & Archives both provide on-site access to Ancestry.com.
The decennial United States Census is an invaluable resource for finding people and learning about community demographics. The questions that the Census takers asked changed year to year, so classifications by race, occupation, and other interesting characteristics are not always consistent between census years.
To protect individual privacy, the detailed registers of census takers that include individual names, ages, etc., are not released to the public until 72 years after that census year. Thus, the most recent detailed census records available to the public are from the 1950 census. More recent census data is available in aggregate.
Local newspapers can be a gold mine for information on individuals, business, and other events relevant to historic sites and properties. Many newspapers published social pages that announced marriages, parties, and other life events, in addition to reporting on what we might consider more "newsworthy" topics.
Consult the Newspapers guide for a complete list of Florida and other United States newspapers available in our full-text searchable databases and on microfilm.
Oxford Art Online is the access point for Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, and other Oxford art reference resources. Users can access—and simultaneously cross-search—an expanding range of Oxfords acclaimed art reference works: Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, as well as many specially commissioned articles and bibliographies.
American Architecture by 
American Vernacular Architecture 1870 To 1960 by 
Classic Cracker by 
Florida's Historic African American Homes by 
Creating an Old South by 
The Croom Family and Goodwood Plantation by 
The Pain and the Promise by 
Blood, Sweat, and Tears by 
Tallahassee, Florida by © Florida State University Libraries | 116 Honors Way | Tallahassee, FL 32306 | (850) 644-2706
