ARTH 264: American Art and Architecture, 1600 to Present (Spring 2008)

In this course, you will be preparing an annotated bibliography and research paper, making extensive use of library resources.  Here are some pointers, with links to resources discussed in class:

Reference Sources

Reference works can help you get a toe hold on a subject quickly, pointing you to the most authoritative or influential works on a topic.  Whether it's a subject encyclopedia like Grove Dictionary of Art or a book length annotated bibliography, starting with reference sources can speed you along toward a comprehensive view of the literature.

Books

You should generally start in FRANCIS with a few keyword searches.  Books are organized on the shelves according to topic, so once you find a promising source, go to the shelves and look at the books around it for related works. 

Once you've searched and browsed at Williams, you may expand your search to other libraries.  This will be important to do, especially as you find citations to works that we don't own.  Because delivery can take anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks, it's important to start early!

Journal Articles

While FRANCIS will tell you what issues we have for a journal like The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, it won't tell you what articles are in each issue.  For this, you must refer to an index of the journal, such as Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals.  See our Art Article Databases for more options.

Some of our databases (like JSTOR) will give you full text, while others (like Bibliography of the History of Art) only provide you with a citation.  Full-text databases are easier to use, but citation-only databases tend to have more comprehensive and current coverage.

Citation Following

Citations are like links in the web of scholarly research, and like links on the web, they can lead you to rich sources of information.  So, tracking down citations is an integral part of thorough research.

Whether your article citation comes from a bibliography, an article database, or another article, you can track it down with the find text button.  This is automatically included in most of our citation-only databases, but you can also generate your own with our citation linker. 

By the time your bibliography is complete, you should be an expert at tracking down citations, but don't hesitate to ask a librarian for assistance if you get stuck.

The Annotated Bibliography

A citation tool like Refworks can make this task easier.  For an upfront investment of time, you will save yourself many headaches down the road.  And, you can easily export records from FRANCIS or our databases directly into RefWorks.  See the annotated bibliography page for pointers, examples, and Refworks instructions.

Further Assistance

Reference librarians are available to help you with your research. Contact Nick Baker in Sawyer for a research appointment.  Or, just drop by the Research Help Desk in Sawyer Library for on-the-spot help.