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Home > Research Help > Art History > Art History Research Guide
Instructors: Thomas Crain, Ron Levy, Hollis Robbins, Sarah Snyder, Oliver Thorndike; Humanities Department, Peabody Conservatory of Music. This guide gives an overview of tools and basic strategies for conducting library research in the humanities. If you have questions, concerns, or recommendations please contact Donald Juedes, the librarian for Art History, Classics, & Philosophy at the Sheridan Libraries. CONTENTS: Basic Information & Bibliography | Finding Books & Library Holdings Research Databases | Managing Your Bibliographies | Specialized Services Using the Internet Wisely | Getting Help |
| Subject encyclopedias and dictionaries are good sources of basic or background information, basic bibliography, and can be used to gain an understanding of a topic's broader context. They can also be used as initial resources to explore or clarify a research topic. Many people use Wikipedia for this purpose. While Wikipedia may provide inspiration or be a good discovery tool, it is NOT a reliable scholarly resource; All ideas represented in Wikipedia must be verified in other scholarly sources. For more detail, see Wikipedia's own DISCLAIMER page. | | back to top
| In order to locate books or other scholarly materials, a library catalog is an essential tool. The Johns Hopkins Libraries' Catalog can be browsed using the ALPHABETICAL mode or searched by KEYWORD. The catalog will indicate whether a resource is available in the Hopkins libraries and, if so, where specifically it is located. If our Libraries do not own the materials you need, you may use databases such as WorldCat and RLIN to identify which libraries in the world own the materials. You may either choose to visit a holding institution or place an InterLibrary Loan request to have the materials brought to Johns Hopkins for you to use. | | back to top
| STEP ONE: Identify Articles on your Topic
Research databases are essential tools to help you identify journal articles and other such publications on your topic. The databases listed to the right will be helpful for the Art & Censorship class. Please note that you may also need newspaper articles and images for your research; appropriate resources for those materials are listed here as well. Some databases include the FULL TEXT of some of the articles; that will be evident in the search results. For items you need that are not available in full-text in the database, you need to proceed to a second step. STEP TWO: Locate Articles
To locate the actual articles you need, you may SEARCH the journal name in our Libraries' Online Catalog, or use the FIND IT button embedded with most citations in the database search results. 
FIND IT will allow you to find the article in another of our databases, to locate the journal in our printed library holdings, to request the article from another library via InterLibrary Loan.
| Selected Resources for Journal Articles:
GENERAL ARTS & HUMANITIES For Newspaper Articles: For Images: For all research databases: | back to top
| In order to keep track of the sources used for your research, you may wish to use RefWorks, a university-wide system you can access via JHED or the emerging MyJohnsHopkins portal. RefWorks allows you to import bibliographic citations into a centralized and personalized database; organize them by course, subject, or other criteria; and produce bibliographies citing these resouces following a number of standard scholarly formats. | | back to top
| The Libraries offer a number of services to gain access to scholarly research material, either that which is held by our libraries or not. To the right is a selected listing; for complete information see the general Library Services section of the Sheridan Libraries' Web Site. | | back to top
| There are many great free resources on the Internet, but most of what you find searching Google or other search engines is of questionable reliability. Because of this, they are generally not suitable for scholarly research. For tips on how to use free Internet resource reasonably, please look at the two guides listed to the right. Unlike most Internet tools, Google Scholar and Google Books link to reliable, scholarly materials that the Hopkins Libraries may own. These tools may be helpful in addition to the Research Databases listed above. To customize Google Scholar to show Hopkins' library holdings, follow the directions here. | | back to top
| If you have trouble finding the research material you need, please feel free to seek assistance at the Libraries' Information Desk, use the Ask a Librarian portion of the Web Site, or contact Donald Juedes, the librarian for Art History, Classics, & Philosophy. | back to top |
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