Research Guides: Art: Home

Welcome

Welcome to the FSU Libraries' Art Research Guide

Do-Ho Suh, Staircase-III, 2011 (Exhibition view at Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom).

Catalogue Tips and Tricks

These are my recommendations for your best bets in researching Art topics. For additional links and resources please see the navigation bar on the left side of this research guide.

Art Index Retrospective and Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
Art Index Retrospective: 1929–1984 provides users access to over half a century of art literature covering fine, decorative, and commercial art. Content includes high-quality indexing of nearly 600 publications, many of which are peer-reviewed, and citations of over 25,000 book reviews. Art Full Text is a foundational art research database providing full-text art journals and books. It covers fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as photography, film and architecture.
Abbreviation: artind
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1929–1984
Subjects: Architecture, Art Education, Art History, Art Therapy, Arts Administration, Cultural Heritage, Interior Design, Museum Studies, Studio Art
Type: E-Journal Collections, Indexes / Catalogs
Art & Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
Art & Architecture Source is the largest full-text art research database covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design. With strong international coverage, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts and thousands of images.
Abbreviation: eas
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1914–Current
Subjects: Architecture, Art Education, Art History, Art Therapy, Arts Administration, Cultural Heritage, Interior Design, Museum Studies, Studio Art, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: E-Journal Collections, Indexes / Catalogs
Artstor (changing to JSTOR) This link opens in a new window
Artstor was a digital library with more than 1.5 million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.
Artstor retired on August 1, 2024—all content, resources, and functionality has moved to JSTOR. For more information, see the Artstor migration guide and Artstor on JSTOR videos. Artstor content is available at Artstor on JSTOR.
The ARTstor Digital Library is used by educators, scholars, and students at a variety of institutions including universities, colleges, museums, public libraries, and K-12 schools. The Digital Library serves users both within the arts and in disciplines outside of the arts. This includes historians of art and architecture and others engaged in the visual arts, as well as individuals in fields as diverse as American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Literary Studies, Medieval Studies, Music, Religious Studies, and Renaissance Studies, all of whom find the images in ARTstor to be relevant to their teaching and research.

Tutorials:
Using ARTstor
Training videos on YouTube

Abbreviation: artstor
Vendor: ARTstor
Subjects: Archaeology, Architecture, Art Education, Art History, Art Therapy, Classics, Cultural Heritage, Interior Design, Museum Studies, Studio Art
Type: Images
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and diverse primary sources. FSU has access to JSTOR’s Archive, Primary Sources, and Global Plants collections.
Tutorials:
JSTOR on YouTube
How to search (04:20)
Primary Source Collection: 19th-Century British Pamphlets (00:51)

Abbreviation: jstor
Vendor: JSTOR
Coverage: 1665–Current
Subjects: Arts Administration, Art History, *General / Multi-Subject
Type: E-Book Collections, E-Journal Collections
Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Oxford Art Online is the access point for Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, and other Oxford art reference resources. Users can access—and simultaneously cross-search—an expanding range of Oxfords acclaimed art reference works: Grove Art Online, the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, as well as many specially commissioned articles and bibliographies.
Abbreviation: grove-art
Vendor: Oxford University Press
Subjects: Architecture, Art Education, Art History, Cultural Heritage, Interior Design, Museum Studies, Studio Art
Type: Biographies, E-Journal Collections, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Images, Indexes / Catalogs

Use the Library of Congress Classification Outline to browse for books in your subject area. Here are some examples in the visual arts to get you started:

N --- Fine Arts
N (5300-7429) --- Art History
NA --- Architecture
NB --- Sculpture
NC --- Drawing, Design, and Illustration
ND --- Painting
NE --- Print Media
NK --- Decorative Arts
NX --- Arts in General
TR --- Photography
TT --- Handicrafts, Arts, and Crafts

The following are just a few subject headings that may be used when searching the catalog:

Art
Art -- American
Art -- Ancient
Art -- Modern
Art -- Contemporary
Art and society
Art and technology
Artists and community
Commercial art
Drawing -- Technique
Folk art
Graphic arts
Interactive art
Multimedia (Art)
New media
Painting -- Technique
Public Art
Social justice in art

http://beets1278.blogspot.com/2012/10/boolean-logic-is-not-logical.html

While researching in Art History you will be working with several different kinds of books along the way, and you might see these differentiating names in any library catalog you are using. Here are a few definitions for some of the major types you might encounter:

Artists' Book
- Perhaps not surprisingly, these are books created by artists. They can be traditionally made or might be composed of multimedia materials. FSU has an incredible selection of Artists' Books - find them in Special Collections!
Catalogue Raisonné
- These publications catalog all known works by a particular artist - such as René Magritte - and typically include reproductions as well as biographical information. They are a great place to start your research!
Exhibition Catalog
- An exhibition catalogue is a companion publication to a museum or gallery exhibition. They usually contain scholarly essays relating to the exhibition's concept as well as images of the pieces included in the show.
Facsimile
- A facsimile is a 1:1 copy of an existing book or manuscript. They attempt to faithfully recreate the original in order to be viewed and/or studied when the original cannot be. In addition to artists' books, FSU's Special Collections also has many facsimiles in their stacks.
Festschrift
- This kind of publication is a compilation of essays or writings to honor a particular person. Here is one example from the FSU catalog for the famous art historian Heinrich Wöfflin.
Index
- An index, when published in book form, is a collection of citations for a given topic. They are also sometimes refered to more specifically as a "bibliographic index" or "citation index."
Monograph
- A monograph is a book focusing on a single subject. It is not unique to Art Historical publications but is extremely common as they often focus on specific artists periods, and/or geographical regions.

These FSU Research Guides may be of interest to your research; a full list of guides can be found here. Each guide will also include contact information for the subject librarian in that area of study: