The Cruikshank bibliographic and image records are part of the Almagest networked database at Princeton University. Almagest, an Oracle database with a Web interface, was designed primarily as an educational support tool for a variety of courses at Princeton (click here if you would like to see other Almagest applications). Its main uses have been, until now, simple slide databases, delivering images and their identifying information across the Internet using standard Web browsers.

The Cruikshank project is the first Almagest library application, in many ways an experimental digital project at Princeton University Library, combining catalog records with scanned images of original drawings and prints. The structure of the Cruikshank records, although currently supported by Almagest in a simple format (a table), has shown the potential for more complex uses (based on an interlinked set of tables and relationships) of this sophisticated database for future library-related digital projects.

To find a record in the Cruikshank database, enter the title of the original work (e.g. 'Sykes Attempting to Destroy His Dog'), or the title of the publication in which the illustration was published (e.g. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens). Keyword searches for titles (e.g. Sykes) or publications (e.g. Twist) are also possible. Searches are not case sensitive. To browse all the records for a certain artist (e.g. George Cruikshank), select that artist's name from the list. To browse all the records for a certain type of work (e.g. oil paintings), select that option from the list. Any combination of the above searches is also possible