Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-14T22:46:02.153Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tracking art historians: on information needs and information-seeking behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Deirdre C. Stam
Deirdre C. Stam*
Affiliation:
Museum Computer Network, Syracuse University, School of Information Studies, Syracuse, NY 13244, U.S.A.
Get access

Abstract

The information-gathering activities of art historians have been studied from three different perspectives: in terms of the books they use; through their own accounts of their working processes; and by informal, systematic observation, written up as ‘user studies’, by art librarians. While observation implies objectivity, a distance between observer and observed, in practice art librarians are very much involved with the art historian in the work of art history and in the development of its methodologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , 1989 , pp. 13 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Carroll, Lewis. The Hunting of the Snark; an Agony in Eight Fits, First American Edition. New York: C.N. Potter, 1976.Google Scholar
2. Gibbons, Euell. Stalking the Wild Asparagus, New York: D. McKay, 1962.Google Scholar
3. Simonton, Wesley C. “Characteristics of the Research Literature of the Fine Arts during the Period 1948-1957”. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1960.Google Scholar
4. Larsen, John C. “The Use of Art Reference Sources in Museum Libraries”. Special Libraries, vol.62 1971, p.481–486.Google Scholar
5. Garfield, Eugene. “Is Information Retrieval in the Arts and Humanities Inherently Different from that in Science?”. Library Quarterly vol.50 1980, p.40–57.Google Scholar
6. Wiberley, Stephen. “Sources for the Humanities: Measuring Use and Meeting Needs”. In New Horizons for Academic Libraries. New York: K.G. Saur, 1979, p.516–522.Google Scholar
7. Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1955, p.326–327.Google Scholar
8. Brilliant, Richard. “How an Art Historian Connects Art Objects and Information”. Library Trends, vol.37 Fall, 1988, p.120–129.Google Scholar
9. Scott, David W. “Museum Data Bank Research Report: The Yogi and the Registrar”. Library Trends, vol.37 Fall, 1988, p.131.Google Scholar
10. Roskill, Mark. What Is Art History? New York; Harper and Row, 1976; 2nd edition, Amherst, MA: Univ. of Mass. Pr., 1989.Google Scholar
11. Hoving, Thomas. King of Confessors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.Google Scholar
12. Hoving, Thomas. Tutankhamun, The Untold Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.Google Scholar
13. Freitag, Wolfgang. “Tapping a Serviceable Reservoir: the Selection of Periodicals for Art Libraries”. Art Libraries Journal vol.1 no.2 1976, p.10–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. Stam, Deirdre C. “The Information-seeking Practices of Art Historians in Museums and Colleges in the United States, 1982-83”. Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1984.Google Scholar
15. Keaveney, Sydney Starr. “The Information Network of Contemporary Arts and the Fine Arts Library”. Dissertation, Rutgers Univ., 1983; Contemporary Art Documentation in Fine Arts Libraries. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1986.Google Scholar
16. Stam, Deirdre Corcoran. “Remembrance of Things Past: Mental Processes of the Art Reference Librarian”, Art Documentation, vol.4 Winter, 1985, p. 139–141.Google Scholar
17. Toyne, Derek. “Requests at Falmouth School of Art,” ARLIS Newsletter [U.K.] no.24 September, 1975, p.7.Google Scholar
18. Bradfield, Valerie J. “Slides and Their Users: Thoughts Following a Survey of Some Slide Collections in Britain,” Art Libraries Journal vol.2 no.3 1977, p.4–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. Bakewell, Elizabeth; Beeman, William O.; and Reese, Carol McMichael. Object, Image, Inquiry: The Art Historian at Work. Santa Monica, California: Getty Art History Information Program, 1988.Google Scholar
20. Belting, Hans. The End of the History of Art. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p.3.Google Scholar
21. See the issue “The Crisis in the Discipline” edited by Zerner, Henri, Art Journal, vol.42 Winter 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22. Preziosi, Donald. “That Obscure Object of Desire: The Art of Art History”. Boundary 2, vol.XIII no.2/3, Winter/Spring, 1985, p. 15.Google Scholar