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ART 101: History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic (Liakos-Loudoun)

This guide has been created by librarians at NOVA to help you find books, articles, and other types of resources related to your assignment. Direct comments to Julie Combs, jcombs@nvcc.edu.

Need Help?

 

For individual research help, schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian.

Finding & Evaluating Online Resources

Suggestions for finding online articles and information on your artist and work(s) of art can be found here. It is crucial when using resources from the web, that you *know your source*! If you find articles from one of the library's databases, you can be relatively certain that information is good, and there are options to limit your results to scholarly/academic/peer-reviewed sources.

However, looking through general websites on the web is not as easy. You will need to think about the author of the information and the organization behind the website and decide whether it is reputable or not. The museum websites listed below are examples of public websites that have solid background information on many art objects.

Please see How to Identify Scholarly Information for more information. 

Art History Databases

The best way to locate articles on artists and their work is through the library databases.  Go to Databases by Subject and look under the category Art & Architecture (ART, ARC) to find a list of relevant databases.  You can also perform a search in the databases below.

Remember not to write sentences in the search box.  Search by topic or keyword. 

Look for additional keywords or subjects offered. Also look for toolbars that provide print, email, and citation options.


Museum Websites

Though it may be tempting to just do a search in Google or Wikipedia for your artist and their work, solid sources for background information on your topic may be found on a museum website. These museums employ art historians whose job it is to research the artists and movements owned and exhibited by the museum. This means that the information found on these websites is of good quality and would be considered reputable. Listed below are two examples of reputable websites.