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Photography (2024): Articles & Databases

A guide for students in photography classes- created by librarian Maryke Barber

Art Databases

 Search these databases for articles about your photographer, or about photography in general:

Find more full text! LibKey automatically creates links to full text article PDFs from the library's subscriptions.

LibKey Nomad information & download instructions.

Interdisciplinary - Suggested Databases

Use these databases to looks for articles about context, and for specialty searching (scholarly dissertations, etc.)

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!!