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LaGuardia Library Media Resources Center
Databases for articles at the LaGuardia Library
Developing a research topic
Courtesy of Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research, 3rd ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
This guide is intended to help LaGuardia students with art historical research. You will find information about finding books, articles, images, video, and additional information on the following:
To find books, articles, and other sources, you will need to search using keywords.
If you are studying an artist, try searching their name in OneSearch, the Library's primary search tool. Put their name in quotation marks:
"David Hammons"
"Faith Ringgold"
OneSearch will find a variety of sources, from ebooks to newspaper articles
If you want to research a particular aspect of an artist's career or style, combine keywords:
I am studying the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat
because I want to find out how graffiti in New York City influenced his art.
Break your topic into the main ideas (aka keywords). In this example: Jean-Michel Basquiat, art, graffiti, New York City.
Combine keywords with the word "and" in between for more specific results: "Jean-Michel Basquiat" and graffiti
Additionally, come up with synonyms for the keywords.
Art: fine arts, painting, specific styles of paintings such as "expressionism"
Graffiti: street art, tagging
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Essays, works of art, and chronologies tell the story of art and global culture through the Met's encyclopedic collection.
Smarthistory
Free and open resource with essays, images, and videos by art historians
Grove Art Online
23,000 subject entries, 21,000 biographies, 500,000 bibliographic citations, 40,000 image links and 5,000 images on the history of art.
