Subject Guides: * Art: Home

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brick building with window labeled USM Art Department

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Art Research - Getting Started

The USM Libraries have a ton of helpful people and resources to make sure you're on the right track with your research! A few tips for getting started on your project:

Talk with your professor if you have any questions about the assignment.
Give yourself as much time as possible to find and request resources, write your assignment, and revise it.
Make a research appointment with a librarian
Activate your USM Library Account.
Use LibrarySearch and MaineCat to request items from public and academic libraries around the state.
Sign up for an ILLiad account to request exhibition catalogs, articles, books, and more from libraries all over the world - all for free!
- ***You should never have to pay for access to library resources; if you hit a paywall or aren't sure how to get access to something, please contact us and we'll help.
Work with a USM Writing Assistant at any point during the writing process.
Use the resources in this LibGuide to find books, ebooks, scholarly articles, images, and more!

Find Books, eBooks, and Exhibition Catalogs

LibrarySearch (Library Catalog) This link opens in a new window
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LibrarySearch is the book catalog for the University of Maine System Libraries. Records for books, videos and other materials are indexed. Online access is provided within records to online sources, such as e-books and streaming videos. To locate and access articles use any of our article databases, instead.
MaineCat This link opens in a new window
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Statewide book catalog that includes Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, UNE, and many other academic and public libraries in Maine. Items can be requested for delivery to USM using your USM library barcode.
WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Bibliographic records for more than 36 million items held at OCLC member libraries throughout the world. Many items are requestable via your ILLiad account. Includes all types of information resources. Updated daily.

Find Articles

Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Art Full Text is a bibliographic database that indexes articles from 1984 to present about art, architecture, archaeology, crafts, design, museology, photography, television and textiles, in addition to all aspects of art including graphic, folk, and decorative, from periodicals published throughout the world. Art Full Text also indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals. Periodical coverage includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins,as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. There is expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and other non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism. For more recent years there are article abstracts (1994+) and full text articles from selected periodicals (1997+).
Art Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
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A bibliographic database that cumulates citations to volumes 1-32 of Wilson's Art Index. International in scope. Covers architecture, archaeology, crafts, design, museology, photography, television and textiles, in addition to all aspects of art including graphic, folk, and decorative. Includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Also indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in the indexed periodicals.
Hobbies & Crafts Source This link opens in a new window
Enhance your library’s makerspace with Hobbies & Crafts Source, a database of detailed "how to" instructions and creative do-it-yourself ideas that meet the interests of nearly every hobby enthusiast.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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JSTOR is a full text digital archive of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Coverage generally begins with the first issuse running to within 3 years of present. Current issues of journals are often available from other USM databases.
Osher Map Library & Smith Center for Cartographic Education This link opens in a new window
The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at USM has nearly 500,000 maps, atlases, globes, books and other map related ephemera. 67,000+ items are fully digitized and online, with more being added weekly. Please search the digitized collections on our website. Additional records can also be found on LibrarySearch.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
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Project Muse, a project initiated by John's Hopkins University Press, provides PDF full-text access to more than 600 peer-reviewed journals from 250 university presses and scholarly societies. Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and others.
Robert Venn Carr, Jr. Online Gallery (University of Maine) This link opens in a new window
Robert Venn Carr, Jr. Online Gallery is a subset of the Museum Collection held by the University of Maine Museum of Art. It contains digital surrogates of the nearly 300 modern and contemporary prints. The collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, Josef Albers, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Joan Miro and Robert Delaunay, as well as paintings and World War II political cartoons by William Gropper.

* Art

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Library Essentials

Art Research - Getting Started

Find Books, eBooks, and Exhibition Catalogs

Find Articles

Find Images & Media