ARTH 1440 Historical Survey of the Arts: Getting Started
Art & Design Librarian
Search terms/Keywords
Before you begin to research your chosen artwork, you will need to know some basic information about it. This information may include the title or name of the work, its historical time period or style, and its current location. Also, you will need to know what medium has been used to create it, such as sculpture, painting, architecture, etc. For example:
Statue of Akhenaten - Amarna Period, 18th Dynasty, Ancient Egypt - Egyptian Museum, Cairo
CC BY-SA 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58987
Your potential search terms can be: Akhenaten, Amarna, 18th Dynasty, Ancient Egypt. You might also consider using Sculpture, Ancient Egypt; Sculpture, Amarna, and so on. These are what known as Keywords, or specific, important words that can help you find relevant sources for your project.
Subject Headings or Subject Terms are words and phrases assigned to books, articles and other sources on a particular topic. When used in a subject heading or subject term search, they allow you to locate sources more easily. They also help to narrow your search results to those sources that have the most information about your topic. Discovery, the Catalog and most databases will have a subject search option.
Here are some subject terms that might be useful for Assignment 1
When you look at the Library's webpage, you will notice that Discovery is the first search field that you see.
The difference between Discovery and the Online Catalog is that the Catalog will retrieve books, ebooks and periodical titles, whereas Discovery searches several of the Libraries' periodical databases as well as the Catalog.
If you use Discovery, you will need to limit your search to books or whatever type of sources you are looking for. Otherwise, your results list will be huge.
Very important: You will need to log in to MyLSU in order to use all of the Library's online resources, including Discovery and the Catalog.
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Finding Books in the CatalogThis is a brief demonstration of how to find books in the Online Catalog.