Fine Arts 68f: Survey of African Art
Fall 2001
BOOKS | ARTICLES | REFERENCE | THE WEB
BOOKS
The easiest, most effective research tool in
the Library is the online Five-College
Library Catalog. You can search in the library catalogs by AUTHOR,
by TITLE,
SUBJECT,
or by KEYWORD.
To do an effective SUBJECT search you must choose the word or phrase libraries
have selected to describe your topic. Official subject listings are formal
and hierarchical in ways which sometimes seem odd. For example, books
about African art in general are under "art, African", not under "African
art". For books which focus exclusively on Nigerian art, for example,
you should check under "art, Nigerian" and also under "art, African. Nigeria".
When dealing with formal subjects gets confusing, try a combination of
keywords. Then you can click on the subject links for books you find by
searching keywords and move right into a formal subject search.
Beware! You can usually borrow books from other Five-College
libraries through the online library catalog, but none of the local libraries
lets art books go through the direct delivery. If you need art books from
other libraries, allow extra time and order them through
Interlibrary Loan.
Take a look at the catalog of a far-away library with an outstanding
collection of materials about African art; go to Smithsonian
Institution Research Information System. Choose "Search" under Libraries.
The library catalogs list all the holdings of the branch library at the
National Museum of African Art as well as the holdings of
the Anthropology Library. Unlike the Five-College library catalog we use,
the Smithsonian catalog incorporates some references to journal articles
as well as to books.
ARTICLES
You will find that relatively little has been written about art from Africa compared to art from many other parts of the world -- and you will find that scholars who have written about it are not all art historians. So keep an open mind about where you will find interesting studies.
From the Library's subject-organized
Indexes & Databases, databases in which to look for articles:
Art
Index: references to articles from major English-language art journals
since 1984
Expanded Academic ASAP: index to articles froma broad range of disciplines,
with some complete texts online
Anthropological Index Online: citations to articles in scholarly
anthropological journals; includes a lot about art in African societies
For this class, there are also very relevant
bibliographies and indexes in print. In the Reference Collection there
is Art Index (Ref Z 5937 A78), which lists articles published in
art history journals before databases were invented. A Bibliography
of African Art (Ref Z 5938 A3 I5), published in 1965, is dated but
still a good place to look for older references. African Art: a Bibliographic
Guide (Ref N 7380 S77 1985) is newer. Nigerian Artists: a Who's
Who and Bibliography (Ref N 7399 N5 K46 1993) may be valuable.
Also, in the Reference Collection you will find the World
Bibliographical Series: each volume is a bibliography of readings
on a single country. In the listing for each country there is at least
one section on the arts. Almost all African countries are represented:
South Africa (Ref Z 3601 M817 1994), Botswana (Ref Z 3559
W5 1992), Senegal (Ref Z 3711 D5 1994), to name a few.
Do you have trouble locating journals which contain the articles
you want? Use the Library's new How
to Find Print Journals page as a guide.
REFERENCE
For very quick factual information, Britannica Online is often a good source. For even better information about people, places, historical events, etc. in Africa, you can use a more scholarly encyclopedia like Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara (Ref DT 351 E53 1997), or Encyclopedia of World Cultures (Ref GN 307 E533 1991). An atlas such as Cultural Atlas of Africa (Ref G 2446 E1 C8 1998) can help with a good graphic repreesentation of places, populations, etc. For art, try Grove Dictionary of Art online, known simply as Dictionary of Art (Ref N 31 D5 1996) in print. When you hit terms about culture, history or and art studies with which you are not familiar, look them up in a good unabridged dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary. Keep your eyes open in the Reference Collection; there are many more helpful handbooks and encyclopedias.
THE WEB
The Amherst College Library homepage is a good connection academic resources over the World-Wide Web. The Black Studies or Art pages point you to academic sites on the Web. The Africa Web Links from the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania and Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources both offer a wide variety of links to sites about Africa. If you have a specific topic to search, you can choose Search Engines on the Library's homepage. (Google is the current favorite of librarians.) When you are searching the Web, think critically and evaluate carefully. Look at the Library's Finding, Evaluating, and Citing World Wide Web Resources.
Do you have questions about research in this course? Contact Margaret Adams Groesbeck (magroesbeck)