African American Art

Need help with your research? Contact:

Kelly Cannon
Humanities & Business Librarian
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
IM (AIM, Yahoo, MSN): refcannon
Reference desk IM: talktotrexler

Reference works

Artcyclopedia (http://www.artcyclopedia.com)
Chronology of the modern world, 1763 to 1992 (Reference Collection 909.08 W725ch)
Grove Dictionary of Art (Reference Collection 703 T948d)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu/)

Credo Reference
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Online Reference Shelf
A collection of well-known reference books, available online.

Primary documents

Archives of American Art (http://www.aaa.si.edu/)
Contains oral histories and other interviews.

Books

Trexler Library Catalog
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > catalog.
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College. Some useful subject headings are:

WorldCat
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Library Catalogs
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.

Periodicals

newspapers and other popular periodicals

Academic Search Premier
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Databases A to Z

LexisNexis Academic
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Databases A to Z
A reliable source from full text newspapers from around the world. From within the database, choose: News. Then choose the source (e.g. Major World Newspaper) and then specify the date range.

scholarly journals and specialized art magazines

America History & Life
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Databases A to Z
Subscription database in American history.

Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Good starting place for art journals and art magazine, and includes the full text of many. NOTE: This database can also be accessed from the Omnifile database. Includes journals such as Art in America and Artforum.

JSTOR
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. An archive for many scholarly journals including some in art history.

getting to the full text. . .

Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > catalog.

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Interlibrary Loan.

evaluating the quality of a periodical

Periodicals vary tremendously in the depth and rigor of their articles. One evaluative tool is Ulrichsweb. To access visit Trexler Library website > Online Reference Shelf.

Search engines

Scholarly (use with discretion)

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
An open-access web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Check our Journal Locator (see above) to see if Muhlenberg has access to the full text.

Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/)
The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in the database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Citation Guides.

For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/). Ask Kelly if you have questions about this.