A Visual Archive of Architecture Images
SAHARA is a digital image archive developed over the past four years by the Society of Architectural Historians in collaboration with ARTstor. Funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SAHARA allows SAH members either to upload their own digital photographs and QTVR panoramas to a shared online archive or to download images from the archive for teaching and research. The SAHARA collection has been developed for all who study, interpret, photograph, design and preserve the built environment worldwide.
SAHARA now has over 47,000 images that were contributed by architects, scholars, photographers, graduate students, preservationists and others who share an interest in the built world.
SAH Members - click here to log in to SAHARA
History
SAHARA had its genesis in 2006 when the leadership of the Society of Architectural Historians was invited by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to participate in a two-day think tank called the Scholarly Communications Institute (SCI) at the University of Virginia. The focus of SCI in 2006 was the field of architectural history. Among those invited to participate were scholars, graduate students, journal editors, librarians, technology experts, publishing experts, representatives of SAH and others who focused on the issue of how the field of architectural history could benefit from digital presentation of scholarship. As a result of SCI, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation invited the Society to submit grant applications for two projects: SAHARA, which launched in 2009, and JSAH Online, which was released in April 2010. To create SAHARA as an online archive that enables scholars to upload and download images through a shared online site, SAH partnered with ARTstor, the New York-based online repository with more than 1 million images for teaching and research in the arts and humanities. The predecessor of SAHARA was the innovative SAH Image Exchange, developed in 1996 by SAH member Jeffrey Cohen and the SAH Electronic Media Committee
Partners Who Created SAHARA
SAH collaborated with several partners to create SAHARA. By bringing specialized knowledge and expertise to the project, SAHARA's partners ensured that it would be an academic resource of great value to scholars, students, architects, historic preservationists, and all working in the field of architectural history.
Our technology partner is ARTstor, the online archive of art and architectural images used for teaching and research by scholars, curators and others across the United States. ARTstor developed the tools for uploading and downloading images to SAHARA, developed website interfaces that are elegant in both appearance and functionality, merged unique architectural data with the existing ARTstor database of information about art object, and helped us communicate effectively with SAH members and the public about this new online academic resource.
In order to ensure that the factual information attached to each image is reliable, SAH also partnered with the library staff at three universities, namely Brown, MIT and University of Virginia. At each institution, specialists in visual resources and metadata worked with scholars, SAH and ARTstor staff to ensure that the first 10,000 images contributed to SAHARA were high-quality images with accurate information.
Partners in creating SAHARA's initial content are the scholars who generously contributed images for the launch of SAHARA. They are professors from Brown, MIT, University of Virginia and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional contributors included architectural historians from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and unaffiliated photographers and scholars.
SAHARA would not have been developed were it not for the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Foundation's far-reaching vision of and support for the field of architectural history will surely have enormous impact on future research and developments in the field.
SAH is indebted to the many contributors to SAHARA and to the large Editorial Committee which peer reviews all images that are submitted to this shared online resource.
SAHARA Editorial Executive Committee:
Jackie Spafford and Jeffrey Klee (SAHARA Co-Editors), Jeffrey Cohen, Jolene de Verges, Sandy Isenstadt, Pauline Saliga, Ann Whiteside
SAHARA Editorial Committee:
Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley
Drew Armstrong, University of Pittsburgh
David Brownlee, University of Pennsylvania
Maureen Burns, Archivision and IMAGinED Consulting
Jeffrey Cohen, Bryn Mawr College
Jolene de Verges, MIT
Jodie Double, University of Leeds
Norine Duncan, Brown University
Leigh Gates, Harrington College of Design
Nnamdi Elleh, University of Cincinnati
Janine Henri, University of California, Los Angeles
Sandy Isenstadt, University of Delaware
Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Alison Langmead, University of Pittsburgh
Megan Macken, University of Chicago
Alick McClean, Syracuse University
Liz Muller, Cornell University
Dietrich Neumann, Brown University
Alka Patel, University of California, Irvine
Anoma Pieris, University of Melbourne
Rebecca Price, University of Michigan
Jenni Rodda, New York University
Pauline Saliga, Executive Director, SAH
Lisa Schrenk, Norwich University
Sharon Smith, MIT
Jackie Spafford, University of California, Santa Barbara
Thaisa Way, University of Washington
Margaret Webster, independent
Sylvia Welsh, Harvard University Property Information Resource Center
Ann Whiteside, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Sibel Zandi-Sayek, William and Mary College
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to become a member of SAH to use SAHARA?
- Yes, SAHARA has been developed as an online academic resource for people in the field of architectural history and its related disciplines. Click here to join SAH online now. Lapsed members of SAH are invited to renew today.
Who has access to SAHARA?
- SAHARA is available to all individual SAH members.
If images will be available for teaching, will they also be available for use in scholarly publications?
- SAH currently is requesting permission to use the images for a wide variety of non-commercial purposes, including scholarly publications. However, such permissions will be granted on a case-by-case basis, depending on the wishes of each contributor.
What should I do if I want to use a SAHARA image for commercial or non-educational purposes?
- Inquiries should be made directly to the person who holds copyright. If you need assistance locating the copyright holder, contact info@sah.org.
Why does SAHARA keep timing out?
- Some technical difficulties are browser related. For best performance, please use the Firefox browser.
Contact Information & Help
Pauline Saliga, Executive Director, SAH
psaliga@sah.org
Membership and Registration
membership@sah.org or call Anne Bird at 312.573.1365
Technical Troubleshooting
userservices@artstor.org
General Questions
info@sah.org