The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals has been lauded as the single most important bibliographical research tool available worldwide for research in architecture, urban design, historic preservation, urban planning, interior design, and landscape architecture.

A comprehensive guide to the current literature of architecture and design, the Avery Index surveys more than 400 current print and e-journal titles, in addition to coverage of over 1,000 retrospective periodical titles, and provides citations to over 585,000 articles.  An obituary index of architects and the retrospective Burnham Index to Architectural Literature (1919-1934), created by the Art Institute of Chicago, are also incorporated into the Avery Index.

Who creates the Avery Index?

The Avery Index is created by the reference staff of Avery Library at Columbia University from the printed and electronic journals received in the Library itself.

Therefore, with some exceptions for older titles, all of the articles cited in the Avery Index are housed at Avery Library or at Columbia’s Offsite location.

The combination of the expertise of Avery’s on-site staff along with the Library’s unsurpassed periodical collection makes the Index the first choice for architectural research.

The Avery Index is a program of the Getty Research Institute of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and is used by subscribers in academic, public, and specialized libraries worldwide.

Records are added to the Avery Index every day, and the entire database is updated once a week.  The oldest record indexes an article written in 1791.

Below is an example of a citation to an article published in 1817 on Longwood, the house built for Napoleon Bonaparte while he was still in exile on St. Helena.

To the left is an illustration from the original magazine in Avery Library.