Traditions

Resources marked with a symbol indicates that users with a Harvard PIN number may access the resources from off-campus

Grove Dictionary of Art   covers all forms of the visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic and decorative arts, and photography from prehistory to the 1990s, including arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Pacific, and Europe.

Image Databases Guide from Harvard's Frances Loeb Library

Encyclopedia of American Folk Art
Location: Fine Arts Library  Reading Room RFA381.2.23
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife
Location: Widener Library Loker Reading Room
Call Number: RR 4792.10
Location: Tozer Library Reference
Call Number: GR35.G75 2006
  HOLLIS Catalog Record

Material Culture: A Research Guide
by Kenneth L. Ames, ed.
Location 1: Loeb Design Library E161 .M35 1985 
Location 2: Widener Library WID-LC E161 .M35 1985
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Material Culture Studies in America
by Thomas J. Schlereth
Location 1: Lamont Library E169.1 .M416 1982 
Location 2: Loeb Design Library E169.1 .M416x 1982 
Location 3: Quad Library E169.1 .M416 1982 
Location 4: Widener Library WID-LC E169.1 .M416 1982 
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists
by Chuck and Jan Rosenak
Location: Fine Arts Library Reading Room RFA281.2.77 
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Material Culture Studies in America
by Thomas J. Schlereth
Location 1: Lamont Library E169.1 .M416 1982 
Location 2: Loeb Design Library E169.1 .M416x 1982 
Location 3: Quad Library E169.1 .M416 1982 
Location 4: Widener Library WID-LC E169.1 .M416 1982 
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts
by Jane Davidson Reid with Chris Rohmann
Location 1: Andover-Harvard Theological Library Ref. NX650.M9 R45 1993 
Location 2: Fine Arts Library Reading Room RFA212.75.100 
Location 3: Lamont Library REFERENCE NX650.M9 R45 1993
Location 4: Loeb Music Library Spalding Room NX650.M9 R45 1993 
Location 5: Widener Library Loker Reading Room  RR 3521.25 
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Resources marked with a symbol indicates that users with a Harvard PIN number may access the resources from off-campus

Academic Search Premier is a multi-disciplinary database that includes citations and abstracts from over 4,500  publications, including journals, magazines and newspapers, with.full text is available for the majority. Most complete coverage begins in the 1990s. Limit search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals to omit popular magazines and newspapers.)

America History and Life indexes materials published since 1964 on the history of the United States and Canada, including articles, book and media reviews, and abstracts of dissertations, in over 2000 journals. America includes topics in cultural and intellectual history and indexes a number of folklore journals.

Anthropological Index,   produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute of The British Museum, covers periodicals on all aspects of anthropology from 1957 to the present.

Anthropological Literature,    produced by Harvard's Tozzer Library, covers periodical articles and articles from edited books from the mid-19th century to the present.

Anthropology Plus   is a combined index that allows joint searching of the two indexes above, covering social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology; ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture; and interdisciplinary studies. Searching through Anthropology Plus is very convenient, but using the two indexes individually allows more specific searches.

ArtBibliographies Modern   contains abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews, from artists and movements beginning with Impressionism in the late 19th century, up to the most recent works and trends in the late 20th century, with earlier coverage of photography and emphasis on new and lesser-known artists and on the coverage of foreign-language literature. Includes crafts.


Arts and Humanities Citation Index   is a multidisciplinary database indexing 1,100 arts and humanities journals and selected major science and social science journals (including art, dance, film, folklore, music, and interdisciplinary topics). Also indexes each article's cited reference list, allowing searches for articles that cite a particular author or work. See the HCL Research Guide, Searching the Citation Indexes.

Art Full Text    and Art Index Retrospective can be searched jointly. Art Full Text is a bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from art and architecture periodicals published throughout the world, with full-text coverage for selected periodicals included. In addition to articles, Art Full Text indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals. Art Index Retrospective has similar coverage, though without direct links to full-text, for the period 1929-1984.

Index to 19th-Century Art Periodicals   indexes 42 art journals published in the US, with descriptions of illlustrations and advertisements, in addition to article text.  Many records contain abstracts.

JSTOR   is an online archive of the full-text of selected scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences, generally covering the journals' contents up until the most recent 3-5 years. (That coverage may be available through other Harvard E-Resources, however.)  JSTOR is searchable either as a whole or by subsets, such as JSTOR Art and Art History.

MLA International Bibliography   is a good first choice to search for scholarly articles on both folklore and literature topics. The MLA indexes articles in over 3,000 journals and series, as well as relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats, from 1926 to the present.  Though MLA does not provide full-text, full-text for many of the articles it indexes will be available through other resources, by using  the HOLLIS Catalog Record function.

For information prior to 1926, see the MLA in print listed below; note that prior to 1955, the MLA covered only American works on world languages and literatures.
MLA American Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures, 1921-1955
Location: Widener Library  WID-LC PB 41 .Z99 M62ax 
HOLLIS Catalog Record

Project Muse,   similar to JSTOR, is an online archive of the full-text of selected scholarly, university-press journals in the humanities and social sciences, but, typically, for the most recent 3-5 years. Many of these holdings complement JSTOR's.

To look for books on a subject, start first with Harvard's library catalog, HOLLIS. It's also useful to search "union" catalogs (i.e. large catalog databases that include multiple libraries's materials) as well as bibliographies. Books and materials that you don't find in the HOLLIS catalog can be requested through Interlibrary Loan. You may also make a purchase request to ask the library to purchase a copy for the collection. Resources marked with a   symbol indicates that users with a Harvard PIN number may access the resources from off-campus.

HOLLIS Catalog
There are nearly 4.5 million books in Widener Library's collection, and they are all listed here, in Harvard University's union catalog of all the libraries at Harvard.  For an introduction to using the HOLLIS, consult the guide Searching the HOLLIS (Harvard OnLine Library Information System) Catalog.  Remember that books and materials that you find in the catalogs below (and don't find in the HOLLIS catalog) can be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

The European Library
The European Library permits to search the catalogs of Europe’s national libraries (including national libraries from countries that are not in the European Union). The default search is limited to The European Library’s full-partner libraries (the "Advanced Search" provides a full list). Click on "Collections" to hand-pick collections for your search.

KVK: Der Karlsruher Virtuelle Katalog
A major union catalog of European libraries, this database contains records for over 75 million books in libraries and other book catalogs worldwide.

RLG's Eureka on the Web (Research Libraries Group Union Catalog)
Provides access to RLG's union catalog of records from the collections of major American research libraries; archives and museums; historical societies and international book vendors.

Visual Information Access (VIA)
VIA is a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard and Radcliffe. It includes information about slides, photographs, objects and artifacts in the university's libraries, museums and archives. To date only portions of each repository's holdings are described in the online catalog. Where available, thumbnail images are linked to the catalog records.

WorldCat
WorldCat is a union (i.e. collective) catalog of records of any type of material (books, periodicals, scores, films, recordings, etc.) cataloged by over 41,000 OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries, primarily but not exclusively, from libraries in the United States, but extending to 82 other nations. The scope of the database includes everything from Babylonian