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FA 156B: Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, 1880-1910

Guide created for Professor Nancy Scott by Lisa Zeidenberg, Creative Arts Librarian, based on a guide created by Darwin Scott

Lisa Zeidenberg

Location in the Library

  • Books(N-NX, TR)
    • on Farber level 4, unless marked "Creative Arts Reference" (level 3)
    • regular and oversized (+) books are shelved together on level 4
  • Double oversized books (++) -- located on Farber level 2 in the oversize section
  • Unbound journals -- located on Farber level 3; bound volumes are on level 4
  • DVDs and videocassettes (N-NX, TR)-- Goldfarb level 1 (Browsing Video Collection)

Boolean logic

OneSearch

Finding Books, Journals, and Videos: Brandeis Library OneSearch

The OneSearch Library Catalog tab is the principal means for locating books, journals, and videos in the library collections. OneSearch can be useful for this purpose at two levels of your research. If you have already identified the book(s) you need through other research aids, use the Advanced Search to search the Library Catalog 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 the Library Catalog by keyword, and use the Subjects listed in the left margin to find related materials.

Subject tips to improve your results
  • Medium (more specific than "art"): painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture, photography, performance art
  • Artist and medium or specific work: Rembrandt painting or Rembrandt Night Watch
  • Geographical location (largest to most specific): North America, United States, Southwest, New Mexico, Taos
  • Nationality (noun vs. adjective): American or United States; France or French; British or Great Britain or England or English
  • Time period (style vs. century): Baroque or 17th century; Romanticism or 19th century; Modern or avant garde or 20th century; Ming dynasty
  • Subject subdivisions: criticism and interpretation, exhibitions, history, influence

Browse the virtual shelves for books in Art and Architecture -- Library of Congress classification outline

Search tips

  • Remember to enclose search phrases in quotes:

"art nouveau"

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

"art nouveau"

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

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

Doing this will help you avoid sifting through irrelevant results.

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

symbolis* will search for

symbolism, symbolist and symbolists

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.

  • Begin with a keyword search of your topic:

german expressionism

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

Expressionism (Art) -- Germany

  • You can also expand your search by including a related term in an "or" search with your first term:

ex. color OR colour 

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

Finding books located in other libraries