Fine Arts 84/WAGS 6: Women and Art in Early Modern Europe
Spring 2003
GENERAL SOURCES | ENCYCLOPEDIAS, DICTIONARIES | INDEXES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES | WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES |
General Sources
One of the best places to start research is
in the online Library
Catalog. Connecting from Amherst puts you in the Four-College catalog
(which includes Amherst's holdings); there's a separate segment for UMass.
All books are listed by their AUTHORS, TITLES, and SUBJECTS, and you can
also search by KEYWORD.
For books about a particular artist, look up the artist's
name (last name first) as both AUTHOR and SUBJECT, for comprehensive retrieval.
KEYWORD searching is not likely to yield a complete list of
locally-owned books on any particular topic, but it's often a good way
to start; you can type in a common language characterization of your topic,
say "renaissance women", then, if you browse through the resulting list,
select titles relevant to your research interests, and note which official
subject headings are assigned, you can click on those and do a more thorough
SUBJECT search.
SUBJECT searching, as such, requires that you use the exact
words or phrases libraries have chosen to describe your topic. One official
SUBJECT for the above topic, for instance, is Women--History--Renaissance,
1450-1600. Keep in mind that most major subject headings have detailed
sub-divisions, so browse through those as well. The five-volume Library
of Congress Subject Headings, near the Reference Desk, is a thesaurus
of official library terminology. Consult it if you're not sure of the
official subject vocabulary, or use the KEYWORD feature interactively,
and/or ask for assistance from a Reference Librarian.
For quick background information, try the
Britannica Online (click here to connect) from any computer running
Internet Explorer or Netscape on the Amherst College campus.
Encyclopedias, Dictionaries
The Dictionary of Art. New York, Grove's Dictionaries,
1996. 34 vols.
The basic encyclopedia of artists (short biographies), topics,
terms, etc. Many articles have brief bibliographies appended. (Ref N 31
D5 1996) The
Dictionary of Art (click here to connect) is also available online
from any Amherst computer.
Dictionary of Women Artists. London & Chicago,
Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997; 2 vols.
Alphabetically-arranged biographies, with bibliographies,
preceded by 150 pages of front matter surveying the field. (Ref N 8354
D53 1997)
Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia.
Detroit, Gale, 1997; 17 vols.
A vast collection of short entries, some with bibliographies.
(Ref HQ 1115 W6 1999)
Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York, Scribner's,
1982; 13 vols.
Articles, some of which have minimal bibliographies, on people,
places, events, and topics in medieval European culture. (Ref D 114 D5
1982)
Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. New York, Scribner's,
1999; 6 volumes.
Similar to the above title, covering about 1350 to the mid-17th
century. (Ref CB 361 E52 1999)
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1996; 4 vols.
Hundreds of mostly brief entries on all aspects of Reformation
history, culture, personalities, etc., with minimal bibliographies appended
to some articles. (Ref BR 302.8 O93 1996)
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2003; 4 vols.
Names, events, major topics; some entries with short bibliographies;
dealing with tnedencies and developments in European culture from the
1670's to the early 19th century. (Ref B 802 E53 2003)
Atlas of World History. New York, Oxford, 1999.
Maps, other illustrative material, and short texts. (Ref G
1030 A86 1999)
Indexes, Bibliographies
Women Artists: An Historical, Contemporary and Feminist
Bibliography. 2nd ed.; Metuchen NJ, Scarecrow, 1994.
A bibliography of books and articles; a section of general
works is followed by century-by-century listings. (Ref Z 7963 A75 B32
1994)
Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs....
New York, Garland, 1997. 2nd ed.
An authoritative one-volume list of the most important books
about artists, arranged alphabetically by artists' last names. (Ref Z
5938. F73 1997)
The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical
Literature. 3rd ed.; New York, Oxford, 1995; 2 vols.
A reliable listing of basic books in all areas of history, arranged by
period and place, with a substantial subject index at the end of volume
two. (Ref Z 6201 A55 1995)
Women in Western European History. Westport CT, Greenwood,
1982; 2 vols. plus 1 supplement.
Volume one lists books and articles on topics "from antiquity to
the French Revolution," organized by place, period, and subject (check
the detailed table of contents); the supplement lists work published through
1985. (Ref Z 7961 F74)
Various computerized indexes to articles and books are likely
to be crucial for information-gathering for your research. In particular,
the following are recommended and accessible by clicking on these colored
links: Art Index
(for articles published after 1984) and Art
Index Retrospective (for the years prior to that), RILA/BHA
(Repertoire International de la Litterature de l'Art) / Bibliography of
the History of Art), Historical
Abstracts, and Academic
Search Premier. The last-named is an enormous,
multi-disciplinary listing with links to many full-text electronic versions
of articles. All of these are accessible from the 'Indexes & Databases'
link on the Library's homepage.
Please note that printed and computerized indexes and bibliographies provide
citations to journal articles which may or may not be owned by the Amherst
College Library. To find out if and where we have a backfile of a particular
journal (with the exception of many listings in Academic Search Premier,
which, as noted, are directly linked to full-text versions), you must
look up each journal title (not article titles or authors) in the Library
Catalog. Be attentive to volume numbers and dates since sometimes we’ve
started or stopped a subscription in the middle of a run.
World Wide Web Resources
The Library Homepage provides reasonably direct, organized access to Internet resources like library catalogs in the U.S. and abroad, search engines for finding particular sites, and from the 'Research' link (click on 'Online Resources by Department', then Art, History, and/or Women & Gender Studies), to meta-sites, image collections, and other art-related Web resources.
Do you have questions about research in this course? Contact Michael Kasper (mkasper)