CCSF Library: Studio Arts: Web

Online Search Tips

Rather than putting a full sentence into an online search box, it can be more productive to focus your topic down into a few search words. To combine them, follow these search tips:

use quotes around two more more words that MUST stay together
use AND between words that MUST show up in your search
use OR between synonyms (you don't care which word shows up, but one MUST)
search string: the way you combine all your search words with ORs and ANDs and quotes

icon from Google

Assistance

Email reference is available Monday through Friday during the Fall and Spring semesters. We try to respond within two days.

Chat with the library 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to meet with a librarian for in-depth help with your research.

Art in America News

Finding Web Information

WEBSITES

In general, we recommend searching CCSF Library resources first, because they contain material that is not freely available on the open web. However, there is lots of material on the open web that is not in the library! Therefore, combining these efforts (searching library resources, and then searching the open web) can be effective.

See below for tips on search strategies for the web to get better results when you use Google and other search engines. And browse some of the recommended websites from museums and scholars, as well as image databases. There are a lot of great art collections out there just waiting to be explored!

Evaluating Information from Websites
Use the SIFT method to help you evaluate information that you find online.

Recommended Web Sources

Getty Research Portal
Digitized art history publications, rare books, and related literature.
Monoskop
A wiki for the arts, media and humanities. Links out to many primary sources that have been digitized by museums and universities.
Timeline of Art History - Metropolitan Museum of Art
Interactive timeline pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, telling the story of art and global culture through the Met’s collection

Museum Websites

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - Explore the Art
You'll be able to search the Museum's collection by object type, century, country and location in the Museum.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California
Click on "Collection" to explore the Museum's database of images. Browse or search for work in their collection.
The Louvre, Paris, France
To see images of work in the Museum's collection, click on "Collection & Louvre Palace."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Click on "Collection" under the "Art" tab to see thousands of works in the Museum's collection.
El Museo Nacional del Prado/The Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain
Click on "Collection" to access the Online Gallery
The State Museum of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Click on "Explore The Hermitage" to see images from the Museum's collection, or create your own virtual collection online!

Constructing a Web Search

Searching for information on the web efficiently requires developing a search strategy. Take your topic and think how you will turn it into search terms. While you can certainly search the web by entering a question, a stronger search strategy would be to choose the most impactful words of your question, and shape it in a way that the search engine understands.

If your research question is "What is the best solution to homelessness in the Bay Area?" the most essential elements to find are solution, homelessness, and the Bay Area. It can help to brainstorm alternatives to the words IN your research question, because different words will surface different results in your search.

Search Word Chart Brainstorm
Keyword (derived from the question)	solution	homelessness	Bay Area
Synonyms	ideas proposals legislation program	homeless unhoused housing precarity unsheltered	San Francisco Oakland East Bay California (broader to see statewide analysis)

Note: the quotation marks around some search terms help tell the search engine that you want results with the words stuck together exactly as you have them.

Combining three of my search concepts, a sample Google search is shown below.