Art and Architecture History: ART 311

Detail from Qingming shang he tu (Spring Festival on the River), early 12th century.  ARTstor. 

When selecting books for your bibliography, pay attention to the publisher as well as the type of book you are looking at.

Publishers:

• Is it an academic (university) press?
• Who is the author (feel free to Google them)?  What else have they written?
• Is it associated with a museum?  What do you know about that museum?
• When was this book published? 

Type of book:

• Is it an exhibition catalog?  When/where was the exhibition? (Hint: check out the bibliography of recent major exhibition catalogs) 
• Is it a critical work? 
• Is it a primary source?
• How old is the book?

"Is that journal peer-reviewed or scholarly?"  Find out more information about many journals in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.

Tips:

1. Search by journal TITLE or ISSN whenever possible
2. Referee shirt icon means it's peer-reviewed
3. Click on the journal title to see what kind of journal it is (under "Document type")

Rule #1: Check bibliographies
Bibliographies and footnotes/endnotes are a scholar's paper trail. That is the record of their research. Don't waste your time re-inventing the wheel and randomly guessing at keywords online. Look at bibliographies as your guide to finding additional sources and scholarship. 

General tips for using Indexes

1. Use Advanced Search tools
   Some databases let you limit your search by date, subject area, or by document type (e.g. articles, reviews, etc)
2. Use truncation if appropriate
   catalog* = catalog, catalogue, catalogs, catalogues, cataloging
3. Use Boolean operators or quotation marks (or both)
   "Mao Tse-tung" OR "Mao Zedong"