Research Guides: Fine Arts 1143: Foundation Media Studio (Webster) Fall 2023: Find Resources

Types of Resources

For your assignments, you can use scholarly sources and professional sites. Avoid sites like: Art in Context, Art Story, personal opinion sites, Wikipedia. You can find similar scholarly information via the library! You may hear the terms scholarly/academic/peer-reviewed/authoritative, etc. These all mean essentially the same thing: information that has been created and reviewed by experts. Most resources that you find through the library are considered scholarly and include:

Specialized encyclopedias

Great alternative to Wikipedia, Art in Context and Art Story!
Overviews of topics from a scholarly perspective
Better for well-established, historical topics

Search Grove Art Online. Try Grove first, instead of unspecialized encyclopedias like Britannica.

Books - online and print

Good for in depth information by experts and overviews or background information of a topic
Because books take a while to be written and published, best to search for well-established, historical topics

Search the Library Catalogue for books and media (videos and audio).

Journal articles

Good for more current and specific research
Good place to look for more current and emerging topics

Suggested databases include: Art Full Text, JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, CBCA - Canadian Business & Current Affairs. Check out the below video for tips on searching databases.

It's easiest to use the library to search for scholarly resources. Google is great for primary sources such as artist interviews or artist websites. These:

Help bring the artist's voice to the foreground of your research and potentially add cultural context
Are good for new and emerging artists or current trends
Are especially helpful when working with artwork outside of western traditions

Or look for professional websites like MOMA, Art21, Hyperallergic, etc.

If you need help determining whether a resource is appropriate for your research, use this criteria chart for help: Scholarly or Popular?

Images

ARTstor Digital Library This link opens in a new window
A digital library of over a million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences.
openverse This link opens in a new window
An extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use. All images and audio clips are either CC licensed or in the public domain. For more details on permitted uses see About Creative Commons.

Search Tips

Put phrases into quotes. For example, "ancient greece"
use the wildcard symbol * to search for variations of a word. For example, gree* searches for greece, greek, greeks, etc.
Use OR to expand your results if you're not finding enough. For example, searching for (aegean or gree*) will search for articles that contain the word "ancient greece" or mycenae. Place your OR words in brackets so that the database knows that they are related.
If your chosen artist is too current for there to be books or encyclopedia entries on it, try searching more broadly ("camp" instead of "kent monkman)