GLOBAL STUDIES 422
Worlds of Art
FINDING BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The reference collection is a good place to begin looking for information, especially if
 you don’t know much about your topic and need a place to start,
 need help choosing a topic (or broadening it or narrowing it down), or
 need some suggestions for further reading.
The following titles, which are all located in the reference section and listed in call number order, may help
you with background information or an overview of your topic on art in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and
Latin America. All of these works contain articles on some aspect of art or biographical information on
artists.
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 2005. REF/CB/9/.N49
Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, 2002. REF/DS/4/.L48/2002
Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2988. REF/DS/31/E53/1988
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, 1995. REF/DS/35.53/.O95/1994
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, 2004. REF/DS/43/.E53/2004
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, 1995. REF/DS/57/.C55
Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh…, 1989. REF/DS/334.9/.C36
Encyclopedia of China, 1999. REF/DS/705/.P47
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan, 1993. REF/DS/805/.C36]
New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2008. REF/DT/2/.N48/2008
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African…Experience, 2005. REF/DT/14/.A37435
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 2001. REF/DT/58/.O94
The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia, 2000. REF/DU/17/.P3/2000
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Australia, 1994. REF/DU/90/.C364/1994
Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, 2001. REF/F/1218.6/.O95/2001
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin and Caribbean Cultures, 2000. REF/F/1406/.E515/2000
Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, 1996. REF/F/1406/.E53
Grove Dictionary of Art, 1996. REF/N/31/.D5/1996. Also online under Oxford Art Online.
Encyclopedia of World Art, 1959. REF/N/31/.E533
Adeline Art Dictionary, 1966. REF/N/33/.A223
Oxford Companion to Art, 1970. REF/N/33/.O9
Oxford Dictionary of Art, 1988. REF/N/33/.O93
Understanding Art: Themes, Techniques and Methods, 1981. REF/N/5300/.R24
LaRousse Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art, 1957. REF/N/5300/.H953
Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Art, 2000. REF/N/6502/.E53
Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, 2000. REF/NX/590/.A1/O94/2000
Credo Reference. Online
Oxford Reference Online
Many art reference books are in these two databases.
Pelican History of Art Series
Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, 1958. REF/N/5350/.S5
Art and Architecture of Ancient America, 1962. REF/N/5602/.K8
Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, 1955. REF/N/7260/.F8
Art and Architecture of China, 1956. REF/N/7340/.S86
Art and Architecture of Japan, 1955. REF/N/7350/.P3
FINDING INFORMATION IN THE CATALOG
You can look for materials in the catalog by author, title, subject headings or keywords. There are four
libraries in the Holston Associated group (E&H, King College, Tazewell Co. Public Library, and Washington
Co. Public Library. Since this group is known as Holston Associated Libraries, you may hear the catalog
referred to as HAL . The online catalog has some powerful searching features, such as limiting your search
to location, language, etc. You may access the library’s catalog by going to the library web page
(www.library.ehc.edu). Clicking on the third button down brings you to the catalog. You can borrow
materials from these libraries with your student ID, or you can request items through interlibrary loan.
If you don’t have any specific topics in mind, the following subject headings may be helpful. Remember, art
is a huge topic, and the following list is very selective. If you are not finding what you need in the catalog,
please ask the librarian on reference duty for assistance.
ARCHITECTURE—AFRICA
ARCHITECTURE, ANCIENT
ARCHITECTURE—CHINA
ARCHITECTURE—EGYPT
ARCHITECTURE, ISLAMIC
ARCHITECTURE—JAPAN
ART—AFRICA
ART, ANCIENT
ART, ANCIENT—EGYPT
ART, ANCIENT—MIDDLE EAST
ART—ASIA
ART, AUSTRALIAN
ART—CHINA—HISTORY
ART—COLONIAL—LATIN AMERICA
ART, EGYPTIAN
ART, INDIC
ART, IRANIAN
ART—IRAQ
ART, ISLAMIC
ART—JAPAN
ART, KOREAN
ART—LATIN AMERICA
ART, MEXICAN
ART—MIDDLE EAST
ART, MODERN—20TH CENT.—AFRICA
ART, MODERN—20TH CENT.—LATIN AMERICA
ART OBJECTS, EGYPTIAN
ART OBJECTS, INDIA
ART OBJECTS—MEXICO
ART, ORIENTAL
ART, PREHISTORIC—AUSTRALIA
ART, PRIMITIVE
ETHNIC ART
FOLK ART
INDIAN ART
INDIAIN ART—CENTRAL AMERICA
INDIAN ART—NORTH AMERICA
INDIAN ART—SOUTH AMERICA
MAYA ARCHITECTURE
MAYA ART
This is just a list to get you started. You can do subject searches on names of continents or countries,
such as AFRICA—ART, personal names (RIVERA, DIEGO) or type of art (BRONZES). There are
hundreds of art-related terms you can search in the catalog. Do not hesitate to ask the library staff for help.
FINDING INFORMATION IN THE DATABASES
Kelly Library subscribes to several online full-text and partially full-text databases that would be helpful in
locating material for your research assignments in this class. You may access them from the library web
page (www.library.ehc.edu) by clicking on Online Databases (the second button) and then on the A-Z
list. To access these databases from off-campus, see the following section.
ARTstor
A digital image library. There is a separate guide for this database.
Biography Resource Center
Biography Reference Bank Select
BRC and BRBS are two sources of full-text biographical information.
Academic Search Complete
Humanities International Complete (from the same vendor, same interface) may be helpful too.
You can see my search on sculpture and Nigeria, and the list of over 50 hits it produced. Many of the
citations are full-text. You can also see ways to tailor your search in the columns on the left and right. On
the left, you can sort your search by type of document (academic journals, etc.) and see some suggested
additional headings to search in the thesaurus. On the right, you can sort your search by peer-reviewed
journals, or date range.
General OneFile
Academic Search Complete, General OneFile and OmniFile are partially full-text, multi-subject,
popular and scholarly content databases. See the examples from General OneFile and OmniFile on the
below and on the next page. The search in General OneFile is on the moais of Easter Island.
JSTOR
An almost 100% full-text database of about 500 scholarly journals. Although there is a time lag or
“moving wall” of 2-5 years, the database goes back to volume 1, issue 1 for each journal. See the
sample search on textile arts and Japan and Japanese artists.
OmniFile
The search here is on Oriental rugs. Interesting fact: if you limit it to peer reviewed, the
list shrinks from over 130 citations to three.
Oxford Art Online (formerly Grove Dictionary of Art)
The online version of the well-known reference work.
Project Muse
PM is a full-text database that consists of over 100 journals from the Johns Hopkins University
Press and other academic publishers. Depending on your topic, this full-text database may be
useful.
World Catalog
It is not full-text database, but it is a bibliographic database of millions of records of books and other
materials. If you discover there are gaps in the collection and cannot find material in the library
catalog, this would be a good place to identify titles on a subject and request them through inter-
library loan. The search below is on Iran and architecture. If Kelly Library owns any of the items
in the results list, it will show in the citation. In this case, Kelly Library does not own the first three
titles. So, if you were writing a paper on this subject, you might want to request the items through
interlibrary loan.
Although newspaper articles are not “scholarly,” they can be a good source of art information. In
particular, The New York Times has substantial art coverage. Kelly Library has the New York Times on
microfilm from 1940 to the present, and it is available online in the database Factiva from 1980 to the
present. Some other large-city paper (Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., for example) have art
coverage as well. Besides Factiva, you can find many full-text newspaper articles in America’s
Newspapers, Lexis Nexis, and Newspaper Source Plus. All of these links are on the A – Z list.
REMOTE ACCESS
You can access all of these databases from off campus. To find directions on how to do this, go to the A-Z
list, Subject Resources or Newspapers links. You will see Off Campus Access Instructions under all
three links. Basically, all you need to do is type the library home page address (www.library.ehc.edu), and
then click on the A-Z list. The first database you select will cause a login box to appear. Enter your user
name and password, just as if you were logging on to a computer in the library or one of the labs. If you are
having difficulty with off-campus access, please let one of the reference librarians know.
So What If the Citation You Are Looking At Is Not Full-Text?
What do you do if the citation you are looking at in a database—Academic Search Complete, for example—
is not full-text in that database? You need to search the Full-Text E-Journals list (links are on the main
library page, the A – Z list , the Subject Resources page, or the Newspapers tab). In the screen shot
above on p. 3 from ASC, , there is a citation (out of view) for an article, “Arts, Briefly: A Benin Bronze,” from
the May 18 2007 issue of the New York Times. It is not full-text in ASC. How do you find it? Go to the FullText E-Journals list, and enter the title of the periodical. As you see below, you can find that NYT article
full-text in six different periodical databases. Go to one of them, type in the article title, and you should be
able to pull up “Arts, Briefly.”
INTERLIBRARY LOAN
Although Kelly Library has a large collection of periodicals, art books and full-text databases, you will find
citations to materials this library does not own. The library staff will try to borrow these items for you through
the interlibrary loan process. There is no charge for the first 50 items requested during the academic
year. Please carefully choose items to request and double-check the Full-Text E-Journals list and the
online catalog to be sure that Kelly Library does not already own the material. Also, the library staff asks
that you do not submit more than 10 requests for returnable material at one time. You should allow 5-7 days
for your requests to arrive.
To request items through interlibrary loan, you will need to register (one time only) on ILLiad, our online
ordering system. The interlibrary loan link is under Library Services, the fifth button on the library web
page. If you need help registering or ordering, please ask a library staff member for assistance.
DOCUMENTATION
Whenever you quote an author’s exact words or paraphrase his or her unique ideas, you must credit that
source to avoid plagiarism. Academic fields have various documentation systems to credit the authors,
such as the MLA, APA or Chicago styles. For this class, you will use the format set forth in Sylvan Barnet’s
A Short Guide to Writing about Art. It is on permanent reserve at the Circulation Desk.
INTERNET RESOURCES
Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing about Art has some good suggestions for reputable art sites on the
Internet. You might also wish to try Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) or Librarians’ Internet Index
(www.lii.org). As always, apply good judgment and be critical of web sites that are not signed or attributed to
an organization, reach undocumented conclusions, have lots of typographical errors or have not been
recently updated.
Remember: If you need help using or locating any of the materials mentioned in this handout, please ask a
reference librarian (Jane Caldwell, Patty Greany, Jody Hanshew and Janet Kirby) or circulation staff
member (David Baber, David Lyons, Pat Maiden, Juanita Ratliff, Shelby Smith, Sara Beth White and
Tonya White) for assistance. If that person cannot help you, he or she will direct you to someone who can.
www.library.ehc.edu
askalibrarian@ehc.edu
276.944.6208
jec/E&H/2-2001/rev 11-2009