Stewart Library - Weber State University


Research Guide: Art Education For Teachers

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.
  • Most books about education and teaching are located in the General Collection area under the call number beginning with the letter L . The Young Peoples Collection of children's literature and the Curriculum Library of teaching resources are located on the lower level.

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
  • useful terms for education are: education, study and teaching, curriculum, and the specific grade level (kindergarten, elementary, fifth grade, high school, etc.)

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 following resources to find images on the Web

  • Artcyclopedia - online directory of museum art on the Web.  Retrieve a list of links to photographs of artists works at museums worldwide - Search by:
    • Movement (e.g. Pop Art, Impressionism) by 
    • Medium (e.g. sculptors, illustrators)
    • Subject (e.g. landscape painters)
    • Nationality
    • Name, alphabetically
  • World Art Kiosk - 30,000 images from Cal State University
  • Grove Art Online - 10,000 links to color images. Use your WSU student ID number, 88... for off-campus access.
  • AICT (Art Images for College Teaching) - image exchange resource for the educational community
  • Google Image Search - Use this popular search engine to find publicly available Web images on any subject.
  • Corbis -  Large collection of popular/commercial photographic images. 

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.

  • ArtLex - an online dictionary of art terminology
  • Dictionary of Art (Great resource! 34 volumes) - Stewart Library, REF N31.D5 1996 Reference table 3A
  • Encyclopedia of World Art - Stewart Library, REF N31.E533
  • Encyclopedia of American Education - REF LB 17 .U54 2001
  • Getty Vocabulary Databases - The Getty Research Institute's Vocabulary Databases (the Art & Architecture Thesaurus ®, the Union List of Artist Names ®, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names) contain terminology and other information about the visual arts, architecture, artists, and geographic places.

  • Grove Art Online - Start your research here with 41,000 articles, 720,000 index entries and 10,000 links to color images. Use your WSU login for off-campus access. Limited to 6 simultaneous UALC users.
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History - Excellent comprehensive timeline with maps and illustrations. 
  • National Center for Education Statistics - Primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data relating to education.

Finding Articles

Article Databases

To find articles on your topic you need to use article databases, also known as periodical indexes. Each database usually covers a group of subject related journals. Search by subject or keyword in these indexes. For home or off campus access please use your WSU Login.

  • Art Full Text - Use this first for articles on art! 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.  Limited to 12 simultaneous UALC users.
  • Use the print Art Index to find articles published from 1929 to 1994 -Reference N1.A7846--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.

  • Education Full Text - Education database covering preschool, elementary, secondary & higher education, special/vocational education, adult/continuing education, computer technology, evaluation & methods. Selected full text articles. 1994-present. 
  • 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. 
  • ERIC - Some free fulltext. 1992 to present. This database is available to anyone, anywhere. ERIC Digests are a full text subset of ERIC.  Short reports (1,000 to 1,500  words) on topics of current interest in education,  specifically for teachers, administrators, policymakers, and other  practitioners, but generally useful to the broad educational community.
  • PsycINFO - Comprehensive index to scholarly literature in psychology and related fields.  1887-Present. Guide
  • 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 on the Web.

Browsing Current Periodicals

Current magazines and journals can be browsed in the Current Periodicals Area, in the "N" section on the Main level. Bound volumes of older issues are found upstairs in the periodicals stacks.  Selected 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 categories for selected lists of sites on artists, museums, art mediums, styles, periods, etc.

Meta Sites

  • Artcyclopedia - online directory of museum art on the Web
  • Artchive
  • 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. 
  • 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
  • Selected Art Web Sites - many useful visual arts links from BYU Library
  • Yahoo - Arts: - a hierarchical directory to arts information (http://www.yahoo.com/Arts/). 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.

Arts Education Web Sites

Selected Museum Sites

Media


Research Tips

Image above by Susan Makov



Updated April 16, 2008 . Please send comments to K Stevenson
Weber State University, Stewart Library. Copyright © 2008 All Rights Reserved.