Art Abstractsa tutorial by B.N. Jones

Contents:

1.) What is Art Abstracts?2.) Basic Searching3.) Advanced Searching4.) Your Results List5.) Ask a Librarian!

Art Abstracts is a H.W. Wilson product which indexes and abstracts over 450 art serials. It is multilingual, indexing

materials in 13 languages. All areas of art are covered from folk art to digital video. Its index dates back to 1984,

yet many art history journals are included, therefore it is a good

resource for historical research as well.

For the most general research try entering an author, artist, title (of artwork or article), subject, or period as a search term.

Helpful Hints:• Put multiple word phrases in quotes: e.g. “feminist criticism”

• Use AND, OR, and NOT to combine or specify search terms:e.g. Dada AND Surrealism Pablo Picasso OR George Braque “Lucas Cranach the Elder” NOT “Lucas Cranach the

Younger”

• Proper names, historical periods, and stylistic movements should be searched for in their natural and inverted order:

e.g. David Lynch and Lynch, David

Dutch painting and painting, Dutch

• Use an asterisk (*) to expand your search terms: e.g. “French paint*” would search for both “French painting” and “French painters”, etc.

Before executing your search, determine if any search limiters are necessary. Search limiter options are found below the search box.

Some common limiters include:

• Date – Do you only want recent articles?

• Peer Reviewed – Do you only need scholarly sources?

• Full Text – Do you only want full text articles? Remember that Art Abstracts is mostly just that, abstracts of articles,

not full text articles. • Document Type – Do you only want certain types of articles,

e.g., only reviews of specific exhibitions, etc?

The Advanced Search interface offers more options and will probably be necessary for most serious research. Click the

Advanced Search tab to use the Advanced Search interface.

Advanced Search gives you far more fields to search within, which you can mix and match by the use of drop down menus.

You can also easily combine search terms with AND, OR, and NOT by use of the drop down menus to the left of the search boxes.

Advanced Search will also give you access to more detailed limiters such as specific languages, and whether or not bibliographies and / or illustrations are included.

Your Results List will appear below the search box. To the left of the Results List you will see your total number of results and suggestions for related search terms. Quality research nearly always requires multiple searches using multiple search terms.

Click any title on your Results List to see a detailed citation and abstract.

As you can see, the abstract provides a lot more information. From this screen you can print, email, or save the citation.

If any article is exactly what you were looking for, other subject terms are listed to help expand your search.

You can print, email, or save multiple citations at once. First, click the Add icon to the right of any relevant citations.

To view the citations you have Added, click the “Folder has items” link.

In your folder, view all your citations and print, email or save them in mass.

Some of your results might be available in full text. If so, there will be a link directly below the citation. Often you will have a choice between HTML and PDF formats.

Some of your articles might be available as full text in other databases. Click the “Check Article Linker for more info” link.

As you can see, the full text of article is not available in any of the Carlson Library databases. Click the ILL link to request the article be loaned from another library.

We covered a lot of information, and we could never cover all the

features of a database in one session.

If you need help, ASK A LIBRARIAN!

We to help!