As with any specialized discipline, art history bears its own literature. In addition to high quality images, books contain different types of information about art and artists with varying levels of intellectual inquiry. All reliable, authoritative books should contain footnotes as well as detailed bibliographies (that lead you to other sources!), and demonstrate evidence of solid research while crediting the work of other experts. See below to learn about the various types of books that you encounter when researching art and artists.

TIP: You don't always have to read the book cover to cover. You can select relevant chapters, trace the footnotes to identify the main scholars in the area you're reading about, and then consult those citations to continue your research.

A few examples

Try searching for a book using a couple of keywords, like Gupta AND (empire OR dynasty) into the search bar of any of these tools to get started.

Maybe you've already heard about LC Subject Headings! Like call numbers (addresses for books to have a home on the library shelf), these are maintained by the Library of Congress which is the national library of the United States. While keyword searching (the search terms we come up with on our own) is a good starting point, sometimes browsing by terms that are already incorporated into bibliographic records can be a useful way to search. Subject Headings are controlled vocabulary that describes the aboutness/topics of books and other resources, similar to how social media users use hashtags to label content. The reason they are helpful is because, without them, you may miss out on certain materials if the title, table of contents, or other metadata fails to recognize the search term you are using. Here are a few subject headings to browse: