Photography (2024): Articles & Databases
Art Databases
Search these databases for articles about your photographer, or about photography in general:
- Arts & Sciences (JSTOR) This link opens in a new windowFull text-articles from a wide range of journals in the arts and sciences.
TIP: using advanced search, you can limit your search by discipline – Art and Art History, Feminist & Women's Studies, etc. - Art and Architecture Source (EBSCO) This link opens in a new windowIndexes, abstracts and full text of articles from journals published throughout the world: art theory and criticism, exhibition reviews and more.
NOTE: it's not all full text. Citation-only coverage begins in 1984; abstracts are added in 1994; full text coverage in 1997.
Find more full text! LibKey automatically creates links to full text article PDFs from the library's subscriptions.
Interdisciplinary - Suggested Databases
Use these databases to looks for articles about context, and for specialty searching (scholarly dissertations, etc.)
- America: History and Life This link opens in a new windowExcellent database for finding articles about North American history. TIP: Advanced search allows limiting by historical period.
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCompanion to "America & History & Life", this searches for articles, dissertations and more on the history of the world from 1450 onward, EXCEPT FOR the U.S. and Canada. TIP: Advanced search allows limiting by language and historical period.
- Dissertations Online This link opens in a new windowSearch more than 2.4 million entries in the Dissertations Online database. Abstracts are available for all, with full-text, including reference lists, available for more recent titles. *please note* Most dissertations are LONG, so please use "print" judiciously.
- Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new windowProvides full text for more than 7,000 publications on all academic subjects, including more than 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. You will also find books, reports, etc.
- Google ScholarBroad coverage of scholarly material on all subjects. Not all full text, but you can find some interesting material not found elsewhere.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowFull-text academic journals in the arts and sciences published by Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Note: art coverage can be limited, but photography is very good.
- Women's Studies International This link opens in a new windowCovers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research. Coverage includes more than 871,000 records and spans from 1972 and earlier to the present. Over 2,000 periodical sources are represented. Focused on scholarly journals, with the inclusion of some activist publications.
How to search
AND, OR, & NOT (also known as "Boolean operators") help you combine search words, to find what you are looking for. Watch this video to find out how it works:
Adapted from the materials created by The University of Auckland Library, NZ. This video is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license.
Tips for database searching
Use AND to connect ideas
Use ( OR ) to search synonyms or related terms:
(“silver gelatin” OR “black and white”) AND (catalogs OR exhibitions)
Place names or other phrases in quotations:
“silver gelatin”
Use truncation to search all forms of a word:
photog* for photography, photographer, photographer, photographers…
Use subject headings: find them under “subjects”, “thesaurus” or “index.” JSTOR doesn’t have s.h.’s; for more precision, search the abstract only.
Too-short articles? Specify length. Lexis-Nexis uses “and length>400”
Check HELP: not all databases use the same commands!!