Curious about an unused college literary-society hall or a restored Old Main? Interested in comparing campus plans or approaches to arboretums? A searchable database of historic buildings, master plans, and landscape features on nearly 370 college campuses is now available online, thanks to the Council of Independent Colleges and the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The database was assembled from information submitted by the colleges — including Salem College, whose Main Hall is pictured above. The database covers about 2,000 campus sites, many of them in considerable detail, and includes some 4,300 illustrations. The project, paid for with two Getty Foundation grants, has been in the works for several years and has been overseen by Barbara S. Christen, an architectural historian who is a senior advisor to the independent-colleges organization (The Chronicle, March 24). —Lawrence Biemiller



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