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Art History

This guide supports the Art History Major and those taking art history classes at Otterbein University. Sub-pages will be included to meet the needs of individual classes.

Search Tips

Subject Headings: When looking for books, use the subject heading to find more resources. For example, books about artistic nudes commonly fall under Nude in Art. Self-Portrait is also a subject heading.

However, books may also be listed under narrower or broader terms, such as the artist's name or other subject headings, such as Erotic Art or even Outsider Art. 

* - use this little symbol to truncate and broaden a search.  So if you search surr* - your search will return any records with the word surreal, surrealism, surrealist etc.- however, this search would also bring back surround, surrender, etc, so make sure you have enough of the root to eliminate inaccurate results.

Organizing Books. Library of Congress or Dewey?

Used with permission. © Helena Söderberg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/craftcreativity/3539093117/)

How do you organize a collection of stuff?  In this case, books?

There are many ways you can organize books, by color, by size, or by subject. Public libraries and high-school libraries often organize their books using the Dewey Decimal system.

The Library of Congress system is the standard system for most college and university libraries. Below are a couple links if you want to learn more about this system.

The Courtright Memorial Library uses both the Library of Congress system AND the Dewey decimal system. The library owns a lot of children's books, and children's books are traditionally organized by the Dewey decimal system. The library uses Library of Congress for most other material.

The most important thing to understand about the library's systems is that similar things are shelved together--if you find a great book on the shelf, check the books around it for more about the same topic.

Google books

Don't forget to first check the Otterbein catalog and OhioLINK to see if you can easily get this.

Google Book Search