How to use NIVAL’s online catalogue

NIVAL’s online catalogue holds over 50,000 records relating to all areas of our files, artists’ books and special collections. The Edward Murphy Library catalogue houses the records for our library books and journals. Together, these databases help researchers navigate our immense collections about the development of art in Ireland from 1900 to the present.

As a researcher, you can use these databases for your own exploration, or you can get in touch with NIVAL staff via nivalinfo@ncad.ie to inquire about our holdings. You do not need any particular research credentials or academic project to get in touch and view NIVAL’s collections.

Keywords

Our online catalogue is most efficient when using keywords for named artists, galleries, arts organisations, studios or other organizing bodies. If you have an interest in a theme or general topic, e.g. ‘bogland’, ‘protest’, ‘patterns’, ‘Christmas’, etc., take a look at our LIBGuides for inspiration or email us at nivalinfo@ncad.ie to enquire.

Search

NIVAL’s online catalogue offers a number of search options. You can enter your keyword into the global search field at the top right-hand corner of the screen. The results page will show every entry in our online catalogue that contains that keyword. This is the broadest view of results and may require some further scrolling through entries to find items relevant to your research. The benefit of this search method is that entries across different collections are captured – for example, it will show you if we hold an artist file on a person and a list of their exhibitions as well as a special collection of their archival material.

Collections

Alternatively, if you are specifically interested in whether NIVAL holds a file on an artist, you can enter the Artist & Designer Files collection in our online catalogue and search for the name at the top right‑hand corner of the screen. The results will only display entries from this collection, i.e. the Artist & Designer Files collection. You will not find out whether we have any special collection materials about this artist from this search method.

The same steps can be taken to search the Gallery Files collection, Arts & Culture Files collection, Design Files collection and Exhibitions database, if you wish to narrow your focus to just one of these collections.

If you enter a keyword into the search field but there are no results, or fewer results than you expected, please make sure that ‘Select All Collections’ has been ticked at the left-hand side of the screen. Click ‘Update’ and the results may repopulate to show more items.

Advanced search

NIVAL’s online catalogue offers a number of other methods of narrowing your focus by area of practice, year, region, gallery type and subject once you are searching within a particular collection. These options are listed at the left-hand side of the screen.

Books and journals

To search for a book or journal in our library, you can use the Edward Murphy Library catalogue. A guide to using the catalogue is here under ‘How to find a book’ on the left-hand side.

Discover more

NIVAL invests significant time and effort into digitizing our special collections to facilitate access. A sample of digital materials is displayed in our online catalogue – often from 10‑20% of what we actually hold. The sample will offer the researcher a flavour of what the special collection contains. We encourage researchers to visit NIVAL in person for a free appointment to gain a full insight into a special collection or material on an artist’s work.

Get started

If you are not sure what you would like to see, try our ‘Surprise me’ button below, which will bring you to a random page of our special collections. We hope you will be inspired by something you were not expecting!