Almost 20,000 art history texts will soon be a few clicks away for anyone using the Internet. The Getty Research Institute announced that on May 31 it will launch the Getty Research Portal, a search engine of sorts to the digitized content of many of the world’s premier art-history libraries and institutions.

The portal, which is open to anyone on the Internet (not just professional researchers), aggregates content from those sources, linking to the full books on participating members’ servers.

The institutions involved are:

– Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library

– The Frick Art Reference Library

– The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library

– Members of the New York Art Resources Consortium

– The Biblioteca de la Universidad de Málaga in Málaga, Spain

– Paris’s Institut national d’histoire de l’art

– The Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg in Heidelberg

– The Getty Research Institute’s own library

The Getty Trust’s president and CEO, James Cuno, is understandably excited about the project. “By removing impediments to study, such as costly travel, and providing an authoritative convenient research tool, the Getty Research Portal underscores the Getty’s commitment to preserving and sharing the world’s artistic heritage,” he said in a statement.

That’s right, art historians: sadly, there may be a bit less travel in your future.