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Contact info
If you need help, please contact Sylvia Roberts, Liaison Librarian for Communication & Contemporary Arts at 778.782.3681 or sroberts@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian
This guide is intended to help you to do research on your selected topic or object.
If you do not find what you need, please Ask a Librarian or contact Sylvia Roberts, Liaison Librarian for Communication (contact information in the box on the right).
PPT slides (2/15/2019)
Scholarly research
Published scholarly research that relates to British art and visual culture of the 18th and 19th centuries can be found in books, articles, exhibition catalogues and primary sources, such as newspaper articles, letters, diaries, legislation and other materials produced at the same time as the objects being studied.
To search for information sources available to SFU students, use the Library catalogue. This search tool includes books (print or electronic), chapters in books, articles in academic journals, magazines and newspapers, images, media and other materials. You can use the limiters (to the left of your results) to refine your search results by type of document, subject, author, etc. These results are not specific to art or art history but include material from all disciplines.
Article databases are useful for searching within a discipline, by topic, artist's name, name of the artwork, genre (e.g. portraiture or history painting) or art movement (e.g. neoclassicism), perhaps combined with time period (18th century) or geography (Canada). Depending on the index, results can include citations for articles, exhibition catalogues, book reviews, images and other useful information.
Once you have identified useful information sources, you can find the full text in the database or elsewhere by using the Find@SFU link.
Art databases
I recommend starting with the following databases for researching artists, art objects and art making practices:
Oxford Art Online
Reference resources on all aspects of visual arts, and links to art images from around the world. Sources include Grove Art Online, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics & Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.
Art Full Text
Periodicals, journals, and reproduction of images covering fine, decorative and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture. Coverage from 1997-present is full-text; indexed coverage goes back to 1984.
Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984)
Index of historical literature on a variety of art topics from the years 1929 to 1984. It covers fine, decorative, and commercial art. Good for finding contemporary criticism of art at the time of its debut.
Bibliography of the History of Art / International Bibliography of Art
Art bibliography covering European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. Includes records on material published between 1975 - 2007. The database contains records drawn from journals, as well as books, conference proceedings, essays, exhibition catalogues, selected art dealers catalogues, doctoral dissertations and microform publications.:
You will likely want to go beyond these art indexes to find answers to all of your research questions. For example, you might want to know more about the history of the slave trade in Britain and the New World or the role of women in colonization.
Historic and social context databases
The following indexes will be useful in taking your research further in understanding the historical, social and current contexts:
Arts & Humanities Citation Index
A multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the arts and humanities. Some of the disciplines covered include: Archaeology, Architecture, Art, Asian Studies, Classics, Dance, Folklore, History, Language, Linguistics, Literary Reviews, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Radio, Television, & Film, Religion, Theatre.
JSTOR
An archival collection of scholarly journals mainly in the arts, humanities and social sciences
Project MUSE Search
Humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed academic journals and ebooks from university presses and scholarly societies world-wide.
Historical Abstracts
Abstracts of journal articles, book reviews, dissertations on the history of the world outside, excluding Canada and the United States, since 1450. Access is limited to 6 users at a time. Users will be automatically logged out of the database after 12 minutes of inactivity.
America: History and Life
Literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistory to present
Primary sources
A primary source is a document or other sort of evidence written or created during the time under study, or by one of the persons or organizations directly involved in the event. Primary sources offer an inside view of a particular event.
I've selected some appropriate sources covering the history of Canada and the United Kingdom from 1760 to 1850. If you don't find what you need, Ask a Librarian.
Primary Sources for the Humanities guide includes primary sources (diaries, letters, maps, prints, pamphlets, handbills, manuscripts) grouped by geography.
European History Primary Sources (EHPS)
An index of scholarly websites that offer access to digitized primary sources on the history of Europe, and categorized according to country, language, period, subject, and type of source. Includes links to valuable collection such as Romantic Circles "a refereed scholarly website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture. "
London Lives 1690 to 1800 - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis
A collection that features a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebian Londoners.
Book, journal and pamphlet collections
Significant English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes books, broadsides, Bibles, tract books, sermons, and printed ephemera.
Early Canadiana Online
Books, government documents, and magazines documenting Canadian history from the 16th to 20th centuries.
Early Encounters in North America
Prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, photographs, letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts of early encounters in North America from 1534 to 1850. It includes perspectives of explorers, Indigenous peoples, missionaries, officials, slaves, soldiers, and traders.
Electronic Enlightenment
Over 77,000 letters between over 10,000 people in Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to mid 19th century, with scholarly annotations.
John Johnson Collection: an Archive of Printed Ephemera
The John Johnson Collection is the product of a unique partnership between the Bodleian Library and ProQuest to conserve, catalogue and digitize more than 65,000 items drawn from the Bodleian's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. English, 18th and 19th century.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
This collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence includes approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from the 1500 to 1900, plus several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials.
A collection of some of the most important documentary evidence from the French Revolution, including 338 texts, 245 images, and a number of maps and songs.
Books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other documents on aspects of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, slavery, temperance, witchcraft, and more. Collection is based on the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American Bibliography.
News sources
British Periodicals I
An electronic archive of hundreds of digitized journals forming a record of more than two centuries of British culture.
Cross search Gale newspaper archives, covering over 400 years of content, using a single interface. " Historical newspapers primarly from the United Kingdom and the United States. Covers 17th to 19th century newspapers as well as the 20th century."
Government papers
The National Archives is the UK government's official archive, containing over 1,000 years of history. The collection of over 11 million historical government and public records is one of the largest in the world. From Domesday Book to modern government papers and digital files, the collection includes paper and parchment, electronic records and websites, photographs, posters, maps, drawings and paintings.
Images
The ARTstor Collection currently contains over one million images. The Collection documents artistic traditions across many times and cultures and embraces architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.
18th Century Online Image Resources
Links to image collections selected by the Visual Studies Research Institute, USC Dornsife.