DIGA 101: Digital Arts Fundamentals

Researching a contemporary artist or artwork will often involve looking at a variety of sources, including non-academic sources, such as commercial websites, galleries, and/or social media.

Make sure to limit to Stetson's collection: 

If the artist (or artist group) has been known by more than one name, or by variations of the same name, you should search for each name (or variation):

And here:

If searching for a specific artwork, it is usually best to include the artist's name.

In the case of the art group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, they produced a work called Dakota. However, if you search for Dakota in OneSearch (or any of the library databases), you will find many irrelevant results:

On the other hand, when you include the artist's name, you will retrieve relevant results:

If an artwork's title is an unusual phrase or distinct name, not likely used in another context, you may omit the artist's name.

If the artwork's title is commonly given in more than one language, try both.

These search techniques will work in most other databases and search engines (see the next tab for searching entitled "Locating artists in articles (and databases)").  

1. Start by identifying the major concepts, themes, works, or authors that you want to research. These are your keywords. Only type your keywords into the search box- don't try to type in an entire thesis statement or research question. 

2. Most of the time, you'll either have too many search results to sort through, or too few to choose from. Use the following tips to expand or limit your search results as needed. These tips should work in most library databases. Some databases have additional or different tips you can try. When you're in a database, look for a link labeled "Help" or "Search Help" for information specific to that database.