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Art Research Guide

Welcome to the research guide for Art at TLU!

When to use books

Books cover topics in depth. Compared to articles, they usually cover more ground and provide more background information. 

Look through the bibliographies of books to find further reading.

A few things to consider when choosing books:

Is it up-to-date? For my project, how up-to-date do my sources need to be?

Who is the author? For my project, is it necessary that the book be scholarly? (Scholarly books are written by scholars for other scholars).

For more, see the Library Guides page on evaluating sources.

Need books? Search the library catalog

The Library Catalog is the gateway to finding books on art. Search the catalog using keywords such as:

sculture
painting
[individual artists' names]

Use the Advanced search tab to limit by date or use other advanced features.

Library catalog

Advanced Search

Call numbers

Blumberg Memorial Library arranges materials according to the Library of Congress Classification System. When you find a good book, look around it on the shelf for books on similar topics. Books on art generally fall into the following call numbers:

Visual arts    N
Sculpture    NB
Drawing   NC
Painting ND

WorldCat

Visit WorldCat to see books from libraries around the world. You can't read them online, but you can see which ones are at TLU and which ones are at libraries nearby. If TLU isn't at the top of the list of libraries, that means the book isn't located here and you will need to submit an Interlibrary Loan request

 

Not at TLU, but since it's at several nearby libraries, the ILL should be quick and easy

--Interlibrary Loan--

Need an item that our library doesn't own? No worries, you can email the title, author and date of what you need to ill@tlu.edu or fill out a form. We can get most (but not all) articles within 2 days and many books within 4-8 days. 

For more information, visit our interlibrary loan page.