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FA 199A: Methods and Approaches in the History of Art

Course guide developed for Professor Jonathan Unglaub by Lisa Zeidenberg, Creative Arts Librarian. Originally created by Darwin Scott.

Digitized books on the Internet Archive

Set up a free account to borrow digitized items from the Internet Archive:

If you're having trouble finding a digitized copy of a print item, try the Internet Archive -- you'll be surprised by the range of materials you can find there.

Books in other libraries

WorldCat

  • A combined (union) catalog for most of the libraries in the United States and many foreign libraries as well.
  • A good way to find books and journals not at Brandeis. 
  • Once you have located your item in WorldCat, use the Interlibrary Loan Form in OneSearch to request it from another library.

Creative Arts Librarian

Boolean logic

OneSearch

Finding Books, Journals, and Videos: Searching the Library Catalog

Use Brandeis Library OneSearch to search the online catalog of the Brandeis Library. Choose the Library Catalog option (the default) to search for books, journals, and videos in the library collections.

  • If you have already identified the book(s) you need, you can use the Advanced Search to search by Title or by Author to locate the item(s) in the library.

  • If you are trying to identify books that will be useful for your research, search by keyword, and use the Subjects listed in the left margin to find related materials.

  • Subject analysis of topic for effective keyword searching: who--what--where--when

    • To find useful books (or articles) that focus on topics beyond a particular artist yet include this artist within the theme of the book, an analysis of terms associated with your artist can provide powerful keywords for searching.

    • This analysis should include (as appropriate): a particular group that included the artist (school, race, gender, etc.), the particular medium (painting, sculpture, etc.), the geographical location and nationality (from broad, such as continent, to narrow, such as city), and time period (both century and descriptive name).

 

Search tips

  • Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"pop art"

This ensures that the database will return results that include the entire phrase

"pop art"

rather than records that contain both of these words, but not your search phrase:

records that include the word "pop" and the word "art" but not the phrase "pop art"

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

  • Begin with a keyword search of your topic:

michelangelo sistine

and note the related subject headings that come up in relevant results:

Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564; Cappella Sistina (Vatican Palace, Vatican City)

  • To search for more than one variant of a term, use truncation:

ital* will search for

Italian and Italy

The database searches for any word that begins with the letters that precede the truncation symbol (in this case, an asterisk). Some databases use other symbols, such as a question mark, for truncation.

  • You can also revise searches, including a related term in an "or" (typed in all caps) search with the first term:

ex. renaissance OR "16th century"

See the box on Boolean Logic for more about this search technique.