Guide to Art Resources

The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with the best resources for research on art, art history, museum collections, and artists.

Getting Started

Keywords: Think about the titles of works that you need to study (be aware that if the original title was in another language, you might find variations on the translated title), the genre (classical, modern, Dadaist, flash...), and artists and groups that are involved in the form you are researching. Boundaries are not clear-cut between styles and some artists cross perceived boundaries. This can give you many choices for your research, but can also make it hard to stay focused on a topic precise enough for a good paper.

Encyclopedias, dictionaries and indexes are a good place to start your research. They can help you identify a topic for your paper, and often include useful bibliographies.

Dictionary of Art; REF N31 .D5 1996
Published by Grove, one of the premier publishers on art and music topics.
Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History; REF N5300 .F64 2000
Atlas of Western Art History: Artists, Sites, and Movements from Ancient Greece to the Modern Age; REF G1046 .E64 S7 1994
International Dictionary of Art and Artists REF N40 .I55 1990

Books

A research paper on art is not a review of a exhibit you attended or what you think about an artist. It should study the artist's life, influences or other topic as your instruction specifies. You need to do research and find the number of materials required by your instructor on your topic to write a decent paper. Depending on how much time you have, you have a couple of options for where you can search:

CSUSM Library Catalog

provides information on books at Cal State San Marcos that are available either in paper (on the shelf) or electronic format (click on the WWW link in the catalog record for 2-hour access.)

Other Options (not at CSUSM)

may be locally held or be brought from across the country. To find out that a book exists, you need to search one of these three catalog databases. Once the material is in, you pick it up at the Library's Checkout desk.

Circuit is the joint catalog for CSUSM, SDSU, UCSD, and USD with delivery in 1-3 days.
Melvyl searches the entire University of California catalog system and delivers in 5-10 days through Interlibrary Loan.
WorldCat searches a 'universe' of library catalogs and delivers in 5-10 days through Interlibrary Loan.

Useful Keywords

Keywords can be subject to interpretation by a computer search function in ways you never imagined! Try to be specific in your search. Use 'modern dance' rather than 'dance' if you are looking for that specific form. 'African art' will bring back art in Africa as well as art by African-American artists.

Useful Subject Terms

Can't think of terms to accurately describe your topic? Library catalogs use specific subject headings to group related books together. 'Art' is such a large topic, you will want to think of ways to narrow it down, by time period, geography, style, specific artist, culture, etc. Ask a librarian to help, or here are some examples to think about:

Art Appreciation
Art, African -- 20th Century
Art And Morals
Painters -- Mexico -- Biography
Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973 (note the last name, first name when looking for a person as subject, this also is the format to use when looking for a work by author)
Art Criticism

Browse the Book Stacks

Sometimes, just looking through the shelves can turn up works you would not have considered otherwise. Using the Library of Congress subject system, Art is shelved in the N call number area. The Wikipedia online encyclopedia provides a list of the subclasses in the N area so you can see how this is organized.

Genre Headings

Genre refers to a type of book or other information (e.g., videos) rather than the topic (as with a subject heading search.) A very important type of information in the Art discipline is exhibition catalogs. CSUSM has a number of these, and to find them is by selecting GENRE as the search field, instead of the default KEYWORD, and then type in Exhibitions. There are other art-related genres such as Video Art (recordings made of interviews with artists or exhibits) and Electronic Journals--Arts (full text journals in our databases or on the internet.) The searchable categories for this type of search continues to grow, so explore!

Journal Articles

Arts-related journals include some of the latest research in the field as well as discussion of specific aspects of art such as history, genre, artists and movements. Journals are a good source for finding very detailed information on your topic. It is best to start with a couple of books before diving into journals to get ideas on terms to use in your search as you will get so many hits on the 'big picture'. To search for articles, you need to start with research databases. Each will allow you to search hundreds or even thousands of journals at once. Some databases are directories, rather than full-text collections. Use the link to check our other resources for the full text of the article. The first choice to make is which databases to look in first! Here are some recommendations:

Most Useful

Academic Search Premier (Ebscohost)
Full-text. A large, multi-disciplinary database offering full text for nearly 1,850 scholarly journals as well as non-scholarly titles, including more than 1,250 peer-reviewed titles.
Art Abstracts
Includes abstracts from periodicals, yearbooks, museum bulletins, competition and award notices, exhibition listings, interviews, film reviews, and more. Use SFX to link to available full-text.

Grove Art Online
Comprises the full text of The Dictionary of Art (1996, 34 vols), and The Oxford Companion to Western Art (2001). Includes new and updated articles.

Project Muse
Full text. Includes a small collection of scholarly journals in art. This complements older holdings of some titles offered in JSTOR.

JSTOR
Full-text. Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others. Art is not yet a separate journal collection in this database, but the history collection is a useful place to search when researching older works.

Also Useful

America: History & Life
Abstracts of journal articles covering American & Canadian history, from pre-history to the present; handful of links to full-text.

Chicano Database
Abstracts for books, journal articles and other material about Mexican-Americans, including artists and art movements.

ERIC
A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles. This has material on arts education.

HAPI Online
Indexes journals from 1970 on providing information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Hispanics in the United States.

ProQuest Newspapers
Includes coverage of over 300 major U.S. and international newspapers, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune. A great place to look for exhibition reviews from the 1970's to present.

ScienceDirect
The articles in this database on art topics lean towards psychology and therapy.

Internet Sources

Your instructor may allow use of some web pages you find on the Wild Wild Web. NOT ALL SITES ARE OF EQUAL VALUE TO YOU AS A RESEARCHER. Exercise caution with statements you find and look for references lists and citations for supporting documentation. Without careful fact-checking and research, you don't know what is truth and what is fiction, but the instructor grading your paper is going to know! Click on a link below to open a page of reliable sites you can check out:

Before getting started, you might want to refer to this reference book in our collection: Art Information and the Internet: How to Find it, How to Use It at REF N59 .J66 1999. This discusses, among other topics, museum web sites, search strategies and more. See the Museums page for online art collections hosted by museums from around the world.

ADAM(The gateway to art, design, architecture and media information on the internet)
Although not currently growing, this provides a search engine to excellent links gathered by British librarians.

Art on the Web
Calendars, guides, and a variety of sources sorted by topics in art history make this a good place to visit.

ArtsEdge
From the Kennedy Center for the Arts, this site is devoted to arts education, but offers some research resources as well.

Artslynx/Visual Arts
A nice site on visual arts with different categories including sculpture, journals, photography, and research sources.

InfoUSA: Visual Arts Overviews
Short list of government web pages on visual arts. A longer list of sites on the Current Arts Scene provides statistics, summary reports and a list of non-government organizations about the arts.

Insecula: L'Encyclop�die des artes et de l'architecture
Although an English site version is offered, you will need to be able to read French to use this site. A large listing of international art museums, artist biographies and more assembled by Antoine Kuipers.

Mother of All Art and Art History Links Page
Maintained by the School of Art & Design at University of Michigan, this site provides links to art schools/departments, research resources, collections, exhibitions, museums and new media.

National Endowment for the Arts
The US government agency which funds art activities and programming. The website offers limited information, but as a Federal depository CSUSM collects a number of the NEA publications which are held in the Government Documents collection of the library.

Recursos a internet d'art i arquitectura
Although the site is in Spanish, the links provided to a wide variety of art are primarily in English.

Voice of the Shuttle: Art and Art History
A large and well-organized site of links on a wide variety of art topics.

Free-access Journals

ArtNexus.com
Online magazine featuring Latin American artists with online archive. Not all older issues are digitized and materials may not be in English.

ArtsJournal.com
A combination of weblog and newswire, updated daily, that examines issues affecting the arts such as copyright, artists, performers and more. You can follow the Visual Arts link to focus on more specific postings.

Directory Of Open Access Journals
Click on "visual arts" to see freely-available full text of arts-related online journals.

n.paradoxa
Although not the same as the print journal by the same name, this offers a wide range of articles on women's art 1996-2002.

PsyArt: An Online Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts
Just like the title says, this peer-reviewed publication focuses on the psychological aspects of art, literature and other humanities and artists. Indexed in PsycInfo and MLA databases.

Local Sources

UCSD Arts Libraries
Located in the Geisel Library (used to be Social Sciences & Humanities, known as the 'spaceship') this collection can be viewed onsite. There are three collections: Arts & Architecture, Film & Video, and Music.

Video On Demand
A collection of performances, lectures, interviews, and installations recorded at UCSD. These are free to watch using RealPlayer. Use the video finder subject divisions to look at the offering (advise using the Arts & Music collection and then using the "by subject" tab". A title/keyword search option is available also. Subjects of interest are Artist Profiles, Fine Arts, Media Arts, Public Art & Installations.

Citing Your Sources

As you write your paper, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found. In order to cite your resources properly, you need to follow the style specified by your instructor. See the STYLE GUIDES to locate a quick summary online or the shelf location for the paper manual you need to use.

Finding Material

The library catalog tells you what we own in either physical or virtual form, but what if you need something that we don't own?

Books can be ordered through Circuit (look for the Circuit button in the library catalog.)
Articles can be located by clicking on the button in the database you are using OR through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL should be an option in if there isn't a copy available in our research database collection.
Dissertations are very rarely needed, but if available for loan, can be requested through ILL.
Videos are normally not lent out through ILL, you need to go to the library that holds the item to view there or borrow yourself. You may find a video available for rent online, but they are normally very expensive.