Stewart Library - Weber State University
Research Guide: Visual Arts

Finding Books 

Using Catalogs

Use the WSU Stewart Library Catalog to find location and availability of books and other media in Stewart Library. Use WorldCat for listings of exhibition catalogs, books and media in many other library catalogs. For home or off campus access please use your WSU Login.

  • Books on the visual arts are generally located within the call number N in the Reference area and General Collection.
  • Books on crafts, photography and the technology relating to art are located in the T's in the Reference area and General Collection.

Subject Searching in Catalogs and Databases

Using keywords of your choosing or Library of Congress Subject Headings, it may be helpful to search by:

  • artist's name: Pablo Picasso,  Rembrandt, etc.
  • artistic style: impressionism, gothic, etc.
  • time period: art, modern--20th century  or art, baroque--Italy, etc. 
  • artistic medium: painting, sculpture, drawing, etc.  
  • nationality/culture: art, buddhist, art, german; painting, american, etc.
  • genre: landscape painting; portrait painting, etc.  
  • movement: impressionism, expressionism, futurism, surrealism, etc.
  • theory: modernism, feminism, marxism, etc

Also note: Exhibition Catalogs are often cataloged by artist, subject, and museum or gallery and Museum Catalogs are usually cataloged by the name of the museum. 


From Bookstores

Order books online from Amazon Books or Barnes and Noble. Also use Books in Print for book sources and some book reviews as needed.

Interlibrary Loan

If we do not own a particular book or article you need, we will borrow it for you from another library through Interlibrary Loan.

Finding Images

Use the library catalog to find images in books. The library has some larger art posters and reproductions in the Curriculum Picture Collection in the library's lower level.

Use the following resources to find images on the Web

  • AICT (Art Images for College Teaching) - image exchange resource for the educational community
  • Art Museum Image Gallery One of the library's databases. Offcampus access requires WSU user name and password
  • Artcyclopedia - online directory of museum art on the Web.  Retrieve a list of links to photographs of artists works at museums worldwide - http://artcyclopedia.com/. Search by:
    • Movement (e.g. Pop Art, Impressionism) by 
    • Medium (e.g. sculptors, illustrators)
    • Subject (e.g. landscape painters)
    • Nationality
    • Name, alphabetically
  • Corbis -  Large collection of popular/commercial photographic images
  • Google Image Search - Use this popular search engine to find publicly available Web images on any subject
  • Grove Art Online- 10,000 links to color images. Use your WSU username and password for off-campus access
  • World Art Kiosk - 30,000 images from Cal State University

Using Reference Resources

Reference resources include encyclopedias, dictionaries and other materials used to "refer" to. Use these resources for facts, definitions or for background information on a topic. For home or off campus access please use your WSU Login.

Finding Articles

Article Databases

Use article databases to find articles on your topic. Search by subject or keyword in these indexes. Find additional databases under Education and Arts & Humanities. Use your WSU username and password for off campus access.

  • Art Full Text - Use this First! Abstracts from 1994, full text from 1997 covering: Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Computers in Art, Crafts, Decorative Arts, Fashion Design, Folk Art, Graphic Arts, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Landscape, Motion Pictures, Museology, Non-Western Art, Painting, Photography, Pottery, Sculpture, Television, Textiles, and Video. Use your WSU username and password for off-campus access. Limited to 12 simultaneous users.
  • Use the print Art Index to find articles published from 1929 to 1994 -Reference N1.A7846--Reference Table 3A

  • Bibliography of the History of Art - The premier international scholarly reference in art history. Including citations to writings from 1973 to present, covering visual arts in all media including traditional fine arts; decorative and applied arts; material culture; photography and contemporary new media; and visual arts aspects of performing arts. Includes access to RILA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art), and RAA Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeolgie). 1973 to present. Use this to find citations. Use interlibrary loan to order items.

  • ERIC (EbscoHost)

    Provides citation and abstract information from over 750 educational journals and related documents from the Educational Resource Information Center. Selected fulltext.   1967 to present. Updated quarterly.

  • International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA)

    The International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA) includes abstracts and indexes on European and American art and architecture. European art is covered from late Antiquity (4th c.) to the present. American art is covered from the European discoveries (16th c.) to the present. Art reflecting the Western tradition in other parts of the world is also included. 1975 to 1989. Database includes Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeolgie Bibliography of the History of Art 1973 to present

  • RILA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art) - The International Repertory of the Literature of Art (RILA) includes abstracts and indexes on European and American art and architecture. European art is covered from late Antiquity (4th c.) to the present. American art is covered from the European discoveries (16th c.) to the present. Art reflecting the Western tradition in other parts of the world is also included. 1975 to 1989. Database includes Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeolgie Bibliography of the History of Art 1973 to present.
  • Annee Philologique -The premier bibliography for all aspects of Classical Antiquity: history, language, literature, archaeology, religion, etc. It includes information on neighboring areas and eras. Covers 1969 to 2000, with indexing of earlier print volumes continuing and new records being added.
  • Arts & Humanities Search - Citations from many of the world's leading arts and humanities journals. 1980 - present, updates weekly. 
  • Academic Search Premier - Provides some full text articles in over a thousand magazines and journals  
  • Lexis/Nexis Academic  - Full-text coverage of many newspapers from across the US and around the world.

Newspapers

  • Many other newspapers and broadcast news services are available through Stewart Library.

Browsing Current Periodicals

Current magazines and journals can be browsed in the Current Periodicals Area, in the "N" section on the Middle level. Bound volumes of older issues are found upstairs in the periodicals stacks.  To see if a particular journal is available online, use Ejournals. Selected print titles include:

American Artist  N1.A512
Art Bulletin  N1.A782
ArtForum  N1.A786 
Art News  N1.A785
Aperture  TR1.A641
Studies in Art Education  N1.S932

Web Resources

Here are some WWW sites to get you started. Most of these will take you to other links, so explore! Use the Yahoo and Google directories to find appropriate catagories for selected lists of sites on artists, museums, art mediums, styles, periods, etc.

Meta Sites

  • The Artists.org - lists major modern and contemporary visual artists.Provides for each artist  a portrait, brief biography, links to articles, essays and interviews; original art, limited edition artprints, photography and posters, multimedia and artist's books. Artists are listed alphabetically and by discipline

  • Yahoo - Arts: - a hierarchical directory to arts information. See also Visual Arts/Sculpture

  • AskArt.com - a comprehensive database about of over 23,000 North American artists, browse by name or category
  • Voice of the Shuttle: Art - art, archaeology, architecture, and design links
  • The Web Gallery of Art - contains over 9,200 digital reproductions of European paintings and sculptures created between the years 1150 and 1800.
  • World Wide Arts Resources - access to artists, museums, galleries, high quality art, art history, arts education, antiques, dance, theater, classified ads, resume postings, arts chats, etc.

Art History Sites

  • Art History Resource Centre  - From Concordia University in Canada, this site includes newsgroups, mailing lists, library catalogs, article indexes, online collections, and links on citing sources.

  • Art History Resources on the Web - Directory of art history resources, maintained by Chris Witcombe, Sweet Briar College, Virginia. Resources are subdivided by time period. 

Asian Art Sites

  • Asian Historical Architecture   - Images of historical architecture in Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, the two Koreas, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand.
  • 19th-century Photography of Ancient Greece- Illustrates approximately 200 nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Focusing on Greece, Asia Minor, the Aegean islands, Cyprus, South Italy, and Sicily
  • Islamic Arts and Architecture (IAAO) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing information on arts and architecture.
  • Southeast Asian Archive - University of California, Irvine site providing online access to the Southeast Asian Archive Newsletterand links for Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, and Vietnamese materials.

Selected Museum Sites

Media

Research Tips

  • Clearly identify your information need
  • Identify key words and search terms to match your topic
  • Develop search statements using advanced search techniques
    • Boolean logic, adjacency searching and truncation
  • Use the Online catalog to find books
  • If articles are not fulltext, search Ejournals to see if the article may be located in another database. If not, check the Stewart Library catalog
  • Use Interlibrary loan to get materials that are not in Stewart Library
  • Use search engines to find Web information
  • Carefully evaluate the information you find for usefulness and quality
  • Revise your search terms and strategy to expand or narrow your results, be creative, look in other areas
  • Use appropriate style to document and cite research
  • Ask library staff for HELP in person or via chat, phone or email

Updated April 23, 2008 . Please send comments to Jim Jacobs, Angelika Pagel, Naseem Banerji, Suzanne Kanatsiz or K Stevenson
Weber State University, Stewart Library. Copyright © 2008 All Rights Reserved.