• Getting Started
• Finding Books
• Finding Articles
• Image Collections
• Web Sites
• Librarian

Getting Started: Selected Reference Resources

Use these sources at the beginning of your research to get an overview of a topic or to identify synonyms or related terms that will apply to your topic. Later, return to these sources to clarify concepts or define new vocabulary. Many of these sources include bibliographical references that may prove helpful.

• Oxford Art Online

  Search Oxford Art Online

  Selected Grove and Oxford University Press reference books available online and searchable as a group. Includes Grove Art Online (formerly known as the Grove Dictionary of Art), which includes signed entries with bibliographies on all aspects of art, including movements, media, and artists. Also includes:

  • The Oxford Companion to Western Art
  • Encyclopedia of Aesthetics
  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms

• Benezit Dictionary of Artists
  Ref N40 .D5213 2006
  Comprehensive, 14-volume biographical dictionary. Covers thousands of painters, sculptors, designers, and graphic artists from antiquity to the present. Some artists entries consist of only a few lines, but many entries include auction records, museum holdings, bibliographic references, and signature facsimiles.

• Oxford Reference Online: Art & Architecture
  Selected Oxford University Press reference books available online and searchable as a group. Includes:
  • The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
    
  • A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
  • The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Art
  • A Dictionary of Modern Design
  • The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture
  • The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts
  • The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art
    
  • The Oxford Companion to the Garden
  • The Oxford Companion to the Photograph
  • The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance
  • A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art
  • The Oxford Companion to Western Art

See also: Subject Research Guide for Photography

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Finding Books

You can find books several ways. For example you can find books:

• By searching Bridge, the online catalog (you can also use the telnet version if you prefer) or WorldCat (a gathering of many library catalogs from around the nation and the world). When you find a book that looks helpful, scroll down the page and look at the "subjects." You can start to collect these standardized subject headings and do searches for other books that are about the same topic. Remember to enter these into a subject search using exactly the same words as you found in your original record. (For more information on subjects, see Subject Headings below.)

• By finding citations to books in reference works or other books you've looked at, journal articles you've read, or even your text books from class. Bibliographies are your friends!
• By browsing the shelves next to books that have been helpful. Our call numbers put books near each other if they are about the same thing, so if you find one really good book look at the ones near it.

Relevant Library of Congress Call Numbers

This is only a partial list of call numbers pertaining to the Fine Arts. For a more complete listing, go to the Library of Congress Classification Outline, provided by the Library of Congress.

N Visual Arts (General)
NA Architecture
NB Sculpture
NC Illustration, Design, Drawing.
ND Painting
NE Printing
NK Decorative Arts, Applied Arts
NX Arts in General

Subject Headings

Library of Congress Subject Headings are the words and phrases that you will use to do a subject search in Bridge (as opposed to a keyword search, where you may use any words you like). This is most easily done in the Advanced Search screen.

Because subject headings are created according to a specific formula, and because it is unlikely that you will be able to guess what phrases this formula will generate, it is often helpful to do a Keyword search on your topic, and, once you find an appropriate source, examine the subjects (usually found in the middle of the page as you scroll down). You may then conduct a subject search by clicking on the linked subject heading in Bridge. Keeping a list of the phrases you find in the subject headings can help you form more and more complex and effective searches as your research progresses.

Although Art history is a Library of Congress Subject Heading, you will probably get better results if you are more specific. If you are interested in the art of a particular country, use the subject heading art and the adjective describing the products of that country. For example, use Art -- Mexican to search for works on Mexican art. You may also specify a state or even a city, but be aware that being that specific will greatly limit your results. You may also specify a time period, as in Art 19th century. Some art movements have been assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings; others have not. You may also search by the name of a particular artist (last name first). Be careful in your word choices--some words and phrases that may seem very natural to you will not be Library of Congress Subject Headings.

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Finding Articles

Use indexes and databases to locate periodical articles on your topic. Databases contain a combination of full text articles (ready to read online) and article citations. Not every issue of every journal is covered in the databases, so you may need to check our print indexes in the reference and periodical collections to find citations.

Remember

Journals are made up of collections of articles.

To find article authors, titles, and other information, search one of our databases (such as the ones listed below).

Then, to find the full text of an article, search our Journals List for the Journal name (not the title of the article) to see if we have a subscription to it. If you do not find your journal listed there, check Bridge for the Journal name to see if we have the journal, volume, and issue that you need before ordering the article via Interlibrary Loan. Some databases have a button next to each citation that says "Find It." This is an easy way to see if we have access to the article via one of our library subscriptions.

• Art Index/Art Index Retrospective
  Indexes a wide array of international periodical literature back to 1929. Also indexes reproductions included in these periodicals.
  
• ARTBibliographies Modern
  Covers journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, PhD dissertations, and exhibition reviews on all forms of modern and contemporary art
• Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA)
  Indexes (with some abstracts) publications about art from 1973-present, incorporating RAA (Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeologie, 1973-1989) and RILA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art,1975-1989). In English and French.
• DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index
  Covers design and craft journals and newspapers, and data on over 50,000 designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops, firms, etc.
• Academic Search Premier
  An excellent general database with full-text available for many of its offerings.
• ProQuest Research Library
  General database with full-text available for many of its offerings.

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Image Collections

Below are some of the image repositories you have access to because of your affiliation with Carleton, followed by a couple of important free collections.

• ARTstor
  A digital repository of hundreds of thousands of images. Documentation is included. Learn to use ARTstor better with tutorials on YouTube.
  
• Oxford Art Online
  A digital collection of thousands of images, each linked to appropriate entries in the Grove Dictionary of Art or The Oxford Companion to Western Art.
  
• Carleton Image Collection
  A local digital collection of thousands of images including images from Carleton's Visual Resources Collection (see below), the Carleton Archives, and teaching collections from Carleton faculty.
• Carleton's Visual Resources Collection
  Over 140,000 slides of works of art stored in Boliou Hall, available for use by the campus community.

Free Collections

More and more image collections are freely available online. Below is a small collection of the best repositories online, but there are many more out there. Click here to see a list of online image collections we've found recently, or else subscribe to this feed of links to be notified whenever a new link is added.

• Artcyclopedia
  An index of online museums and image archives. Includes links to where the works of over 8000 different fine artists can be viewed online.
  
• Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco ImageBase
  Images of more than 82,000 objects from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor). Documentation is comparatively scanty, but the collection is searchable and allows the user to zoom in on the images.
• The Guggenheim Museum
  The Guggenheim collection online represents 169 artists and encompasses both the classic and the new--from the Guggenheim's earliest work, an 1867 landscape by Camille Pissarro, through more recent acquisitions, a 1998-99 sculpture by Robert Gober. Each work may be viewed at small, medium, or large resolution, and is accompanied by commentary.
• El Museo Nacional del Prado on Google Earth
  The Prado Museum and Google Earth have teamed to provide access to ultra-high-resolution images of fourteen masterpiece paintings. Click the link above for detailed instructions on how to access them. (The instructions are pretty complicated.)
  
• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
  Nearly 1 million images from the Library's collections of prints and photographs including images from the the National Child Labor Committee Collection, the U.S. News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, the Library of Congress Baseball Card Collection, and the Collection of Architecture, Design and Engineering Drawings.
• National Gallery of Art
  Records on all of the more than 110,000 objects and images of more than 6,000 objects in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Users may browse the collection or search the collection by artist, title, or a combination of criteria.
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery
  Over 450,000 images from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.
• accessCeramics
  A growing collection of 1,000+ images of contemporary ceramics by working professional ceramic artists. It is designed for use by artists, arts educators, scholars, collectors and the general public, and is intended to fill a void in contemporary ceramics digital image collections on the web.

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Web Sites

• Smarthistory
  A free, online multimedia art history textbook that includes images, audio descriptions, videos, and dynamic timelines.
  
• Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
  A free, online journal focused on nineteenth-century art.
• Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance
  An interdisciplinary research database containing documentation on the antique monuments known in the Renaissance; related Renaissance documents such as texts and images; information about locations, persons, and periods; and bibliographic data.
• Art History Resources on the Web
  Maintained by Chris Witcombe of Sweet Briar College, this award-winning site has exhaustive links to art history pages.
• ArtSource
  "...a gathering point for networked resources on Art and Architecture. The content is diverse and includes pointers to resources around the net as well as original materials submitted by librarians, artists, and art historians, etc."
• Mother of All Art History Links Pages
  Includes links to research pages as well as image collections.
• The Timeline of Art History
  Arranged chronologically, geographically, and thematically, the Timeline currently offers information about art up to 1600 A.D. It is housed, researched, written, and maintained by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's curatorial, conservation, and educational staff.
• Dictionary of Art Historians
  Biographical and methodological information about major historians of western art.
  
• Clay Art Web Guide
  An extensive catalog of more than 1,500 web sites on ceramics, organized by category. Curated by Vicki Hardin, a ceramic artist specializing in raku and pit firing.
• Ceramics Today
  An extensive web site featuring hundreds of articles on ceramics, a gallery featuring the work of hundreds of ceramics artists, and a catalog of links to more than 1,000 web sites on various ceramics topics.

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