When entering Personal or Group Names, put the last name first, or use the last name with a wildcard. Because architects change firm names, you may want to enter the principal architect's name, followed by a wildcard; Johnson, P% for works by Philip Johnson's firm, for example.
Subject terms include building types (libraries, museums, greenhouses); building parts or components (balustrades, stairs, roofs); and building materials (concrete, glass). Subject terms in this database do not include locations, personal or corporate group names, or object titles (building names, painting titles, etc.). Subject terms are taken from the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, a controlled hierarchical vocabulary of approximately 100,000 terms in art and architecture and related fields. If you do not have a forms-enabled browser and are unable to review the exact form of a subject term, it may be advisable to use a wildcard at the end of a subject search because many of the terms used in SPIRO are qualified, e.g. "libraries (buildings)", or "libraries (rooms). You will not be able to find "libraries" unless you enter one of these three variations: "libraries (buildings)", "libraries (rooms)", or "libraries%".
When searching for Building or Object Names, note that residential building names such as J. J. Glessner House may be found under a person's full name or surname: if "Glessner House" does not work, try "%Glessner House." If you do not retrieve any results, read the instructions again. It is very possible that SPIRO does not yet contain records for your search.
Locations include place, state, and country names, and are searched hierarchically: a search for France will find buildings in Paris as well as all other French locations in the database. A search for Paris will retrieve only Paris. Do not use city and state together: "San Francisco" will work, but "San Francisco, California" will not. See the exact spelling of location names shown in the Locations list.
You can limit the extent of your search by selecting a Period or Topic from the list in the scrollable box at the top of the form. The default is "any": this will search all the Periods and Topics in the database. The Periods and Topics reflect the organizational scheme of the Architecture Visual Resources Library. While most of them are recognizable historical periods, the topics are probably unique to the Architecture Visual Resources Library.
All images in SPIRO are copyrighted and may not be downloaded or otherwise used without the express permission of the copyright holder. For additional information, see Copyright and Sources in WebSPIRO.
Send comments or questions to the Architecture Visual Resources Library at cedvisualresources@berkeley.edu.