Browse the Catalog
Explore the full collection by category, subject, length, or reading time. The catalog includes seventy architecture titles and ten each in art history, painting and sculpture, and design and photography.
Do more with this book catalog
The OGIYI Art & Architecture Library brings together one hundred public-domain books on architecture, art history, painting and sculpture, and design and photography. These are original texts, often illustrated, that document buildings, artists, movements, and the material culture of past centuries.
Each book has been prepared with reading aids. You can explore the catalog by topic, length, or reading time, compare works side by side, and get honest estimates of the time a book may take to read. The tools below are meant to help you find a book that fits your interests and schedule.
100
books in this catalog
4
catalog categories
100
books with reading-time data
Made for this collection
Ways the catalog data becomes useful
Compare Books
Select two or more books and view their word counts, reading times, and other details side by side. This helps you see how they differ in scope and approach.
Reading Time Estimator
Not sure how long a book will take? The estimator uses word count and average reading speed to give a realistic time range. Many books are quick reads; others are longer explorations.
Choosing, Comparing, and Tracking: A Working Guide
The OGIYI Art & Architecture Library holds one hundred public-domain titles, with seventy concentrated in architecture and the rest spread across painting and sculpture, design and photography, and art history. That distribution means a search for interior decoration can surface everything from a practical manual to a court memoir, and the three tools on this page exist to help you sort those results without pretending to rank literary merit. Book Finder narrows by catalog facts, Compare Books sets titles side by side, and Reading Tracker turns a chosen text into a page-based plan.
Consider a title like Wood-Block Printing A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice — Background and Themes. It sits in Design Photography, runs about 20,000 words, and has four text sections. A quick Finder query could locate it, Compare Books could weigh it against a similar craft title, and Reading Tracker could schedule its roughly 88 estimated minutes across a few days. The tools are most useful in that order, but they also work independently when you already know what you want.
When to Start with Book Finder
Book Finder is the entry point when you have a category in mind but not a specific title. Because the catalog is small, you can combine criteria like category and estimated reading time to separate a 20,000-word craft manual from a 99,000-word expedition narrative. The tool also lets you filter by chapter rhythm and sentence flow, which matter more for long texts than for short ones.
A no-preference choice does not penalize a book, so you can leave a criterion blank if it does not matter to you. The live form omits a criterion when the catalog lacks enough variation to make it useful, which keeps the results honest. For example, subjects like France -- Court and courtiers appear in only six books, so a subject filter is meaningful only for niche searches.
If you are unsure whether a book is worth your time, Finder narrows the field but does not tell you whether the prose is engaging. That judgment comes from reading a sample or from comparing several candidates side by side.
When to Move to Compare Books
Compare Books is the next step when two or three titles look equally plausible. You can line up word count, estimated reading time, text sections, sentence flow, and chapter rhythm for each, which often reveals a practical difference hidden by a similar category label. For instance, a 20,000-word book with four text sections will feel very different from a 20,000-word book with sixteen sections, even if both are quick reads.
Sentence flow and chapter rhythm are descriptive metrics relative to this catalog, not reading-level or quality ratings. A high average sentence length does not mean a book is difficult; it simply means the prose tends to use longer sentences. Use Compare to predict pacing, not to judge merit.
When to Use Reading Tracker
Reading Tracker is for after you have chosen a book. It records progress in pages, with a current page, total pages, and a daily page goal. If the catalog does not provide a fixed page count, the tool estimates total pages by dividing the word count by 250, the configured words-per-page value. You can replace that estimate with the page count from your own edition or reading app.
The tracker then calculates estimated remaining time based on the proportion of pages left, and it estimates finish days by dividing remaining pages by your daily goal. Progress is stored in your browser's local storage, so no account is needed. The default daily goal is 20 pages, but you can adjust it to match your schedule.
Because the tracker works in pages, it does not record sections or minutes read. If you prefer to track by chapters, you would need to convert those chapters to page ranges yourself. The tool is best for steady, page-based progress.