Just the other day I overheard an art educator longing for more free art indexes and databases, because she was frustrated with the hit-or-miss randomness of doing Google keyword searches.
Although most major museums have their collections and artists online in free, searchable databases, sometimes that's too limiting, and many quality art databases (like ARTstor and Oxford) require subscriptions. Not every library can afford those subscriptions.
So, it's a great thing to discover a new, free resource for students, educators, and anyone interested in researching quilts: The Quilt Index (http://www.quiltindex.org). Built on an open source platform, it currently features 20,000 quilts (and counting).
To add content, it relies on building partnerships with other institutions. So far it is partnering with outfits like American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Museum of the American Quilter’s Society, and Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, to name a few. All these collections, together in one easy-to-search place!
