LIBRARY GUIDE TO AH 3450/3550 - History of Photography

 
John Moffat, William Henry Fox Talbot, 1864. Public domain photograph.

To locate scholarly articles in the following databases, choose your keywords carefully. The artist's name and keywords relevant to your research question are a good start. Unless it is a particularly famous work of art, there typically are not articles that discuss the exact photograph or body of work you are researching. You may have to broaden out to more general ideas and then tie that research in to your thesis. 

Art and Architecture
Art database that covers the entirety of art history. Most of the material in this database will be available from the database in PDF form and can be immediately downloaded.

Art Bibliographies Modern
This database focuses on material relevant to the modern period. This is a citation database, meaning you will need to use the "Get It at OU Libraries" link in order to find the full-text. Here is a video showing how to use this resource.

JSTOR
Multidisciplinary database, covering the humanities. 

New York Times Historical
This resource goes back to the 1850s and can be an excellent source of primary source material--reviews of exhibitions, news about innovations in photography from the older periods, etc.

Historical Abstracts
Our main history database. 

Depending on your research question, we have other resources that might be appropriate--feel free to contact me for information. 

 

We sometimes don't have what you need in our collection--that's ok! We can get books and articles from other libraries for you. Here is a video illustrating this process.

 

ARTstor  -- our main subscription image database, with an extensive photography collection. Register with the site using your OU email to download images.

Prints and Photographs--Library of Congress -- historical collections 

Magnum Photos  Famous photojournalist collective/agency

Interlibrary Loan
You may request materials we don't have and we'll borrow them from another library for you.