Searching in the library catalog or in one of the library's databases can be a little bit different than searching in Google.
Using AND, OR, NOT, or quotations marks to combine your search terms, search for similar terms, exclude terms, or search for a specific phrase or name, can help you discover more relevant information on your topic:
Use "AND" to combine terms:
(Modern Art AND portraiture)
Use "OR" to use similar terms:
(Portraiture OR Portrait)
Use "NOT" to use exclude terms:
(Portrait NOT Self-Portrait)
Use "quotation marks" in Keyword or Title Searches for specific names or phrases (don't use quotation marks when doing Subject searches):
"Kerry James Marshall"
"performance art"
A Keyword Search will search for any time a word or phrase is mentioned in the description and/or record of an item. This can sometimes give you search results that are not relevant to your general research question.
Starting your research with a keyword search can lead to the identification or subject terms, which can help you narrow your search results and find more relevant books and articles. (See What Is A Subject Heading? tab.)
If you're researching an artist, search for their name using quotation marks. "Kerry James Marshall" will look for books about the artist, but Kerry James Marshall will look for each name individually, results in at least some irrelevant results.
Subject Terms and/or Headings are terms that are used to describe the content of an item. Searching by subject will bring you materials that are explicitly about that topic. You can use subject terms to view other items that have also been "tagged" as being about a particular topic. Typically, we don't know what subjects terms to try, so we start with keywords.
For example, the keyword search women and surrealism leads me to the book The militant muse: love, war, and the women of surrealism by Whitney Chadwick. The description of the book includes the subject headings below; each can be clicked on to find all the other books we own about that subject; or you can copy and paste into a new search box.
Important Note: InterLibrary Loan (ILL) may be used to request books you learn about that Pace Libraries do not own.
Suggested Subject Headings for Art History:
Please note that this list is not finite, and that subject headings do not always reflect more commonly used terminology, or are by an means entirely inclusive.
Suggested subject headings:
To search by subject in the Pace Library Catalog, select "Subject" from the drop down menu under "Books & Media":
To access these journal titles or to find a specific journal or magazine, search for the journal title using the Journal Title tab from the library home page:
