SAHARA



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 BrownMIT 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 BrownMITUniversity 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