A-H 322 Byzantine Art and Civilization
Spring, 1999
Research Guide
The following is intended to supplement
your conference with me as you select a research topic and to reinforce some
of the research tips shared in class from time to time. The information here
is the product of long experience, both as a researcher myself and as a teacher
who has guided student research for many years. Please read through, make notes
about how this might apply to your topic, and review from time to time as your
research progresses to be sure that you've not missed anything, such as a particular
resource, a category of source materials, or a particular approach.
1. FOREMOST, works of art are some of your most important PRIMARY SOURCES.
They, like primary sources such as the saints' vitae you read, were created
at the time we're studying and reflect directly the ideas, values, and aspirations
of those who created them, who commissioned them, and/or who used them. Spend
time visually with the work(s) you have selected for the focus of your research.
DESCRIBE (remember our very first exercise?) them to create a word picture adequate
to conjure up an image in the mind of a reader without a reproduction. You will
find that you see things in the work(s) that the process of description forces
you to notice that you might not otherwise observe. Rely on your own powers
of observation, ALWAYS, before relying on anyone else's description, analysis.
And then THINK about what you are observing; you'll be surprised, and pleased,
at how much you can figure out on your own by carefully studying the work first
2. For every
work of art that you use/cite in your paper, note carefully where you find it
reproduced and/or studied, as well as all relevant identification information
(sizes, current location, medium/material/technique, other facts). If you can
afford it, make a photocopy, as well as noting down what book/journal/other
you found the reproduction in.
3. From the above two processes, jot down some key words to guide research.
These are used in searching the NOTIS and Infokat databases, for looking up
in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, and for searching the net, among
others. Think like a detective: How many different clues might yield you useful
perspectives on your topic.
- For example, if you were researching a topic on Byzantine marginal psalters
(such as the Chludov Psalter we've studied now in several contexts), you might
come up with a list of key words that describe it, such as: Psalter, marginal,
illumination, Chludov, Byzantine, Iconoclasm, manuscript, miniature, etc.
Use these words to run your searches; you've probably already discovered that
it's more effective to combine several to focus your search and narrow down
the "hits" to those closer to your topic. For example, "marginal and psalter"
would yield all the psalters with that particular format, while "Byzantine
and illumination" would get a much larger canvas of all Byzantine manuscripts
in order to begin to get some context, and "Iconoclasm and miniature" would
yield all types of manuscripts, not just psalters, which had anything to do
with the Iconoclastic controversy. Each combination yields different kinds
of approaches, some of which will be more useful, others less, but all worth
trying to figure out what kind of information you will be able to use most
productively.
4. An important consideration when searching per 3 above: Know the parameters
of whatever search vehicle you use. For example, the NOTIS
and INFOKAT databases (on-line card
catalogues) at UK will yield books (reference and more focussed topics) as well
as monographs, anthologies, and things like exhibition catalogues, BUT they will
not turn up articles or more focussed, smaller things like chapters in an anthology.
For these, you need to use a different kind of search engine. Infotrac covers
a lot of territory but in most cases only for the past couple of years (for the
Art Bulletin, the major general art history publication in the US, articles
indexed include only those from 1997 to the present), and only for certain journals,
not necessarily those most relevant to our topic. You'd want to check to see if
some of the "best" Byzantine journals are represented before concluding as to
the effectiveness of a search using such an engine. On the other hand, entire
articles are reprinted in full on Infotrac, so you can download them. Remember
to save all bibliographic information on them before exiting (what journal it
comes from, year, pages, etc.) to save having to go back
- There are few art journals indexed in
the Reader's Guide; on the other hand, the Art Index indexes
lots of art journals, but not all of the art historical. The best index
to art historical materials, and now on-line, is to be found in the Bibliography
of the History of Art, where we are already focussed in on art historical
topics and publications (this includes monographs, articles, and exhibition
catalogues, among other types of information indexed, and it also includes
brief abstracts for each entry, so that you can get a good sense of whether
it will be useful before you go to look it up. So your choice of search
engine controls the kind and quality of the information you can gain from
using it. Don't assert that "there's nothing on this topic" until you can
safely say that you've consulted all the relevant search engines with the
right degree of focus. Don't use a bulldozer to excavate that needle from
the haystack!
- And remember, as I've been trying to exemplify in class, that for Byzantine
art, as wit h most medieval art, it's impossible to understand the art apart
from the culture. So journals that deal not just with art but with a range
of Byzantine cultural phenomena, such as Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Byzantion,
Revue des etudes byzantines, and others that are broader in scope
(and which, as a result, won't be located in the Art Library, and might
not be indexed in some of the art periodicals). I've listed some of the
major Byzantine journals on the handout of books on reserve in the Art Library;
note their titles and locations.
4. Searches through on-line databases: I use NOTIS
a lot, so will discuss it in particular. Not only can you do keyword searches
(K= xxx and xxx), which, again, are always more efficient when you use the AND
operand. "A= xxx" for any more works by authors for whom you've already found
other useful materials can turn up further resources (scholars tend to take
a subject and work from it in some direction over the years). You can also "shelf-read"
online from NOTIS -- that is, browse around a title that you've identified as
useful, to see whether there are other similarly useful titles in the vicinity,
catalogued with about the same call numbers -- as you can when you're standing
in the stacks of the Art Library or WTY. The advantage of doing this on-line
is that the card catalogue for such searches includes holdings at all the UK
libraries (so you can shelf-read at WTY, Art, Architecture, Special Collections,
and the Theological Seminary, for example, all at once, rather than having to
go to each of the separate libraries themselves).
- From the search page in NOTIS, you type
in C (for "call number") and then L (for "Library of Congress" number system)
(most of the Dewey system has been converted but if you have an all-number
number, that's Dewey, so you'd type in "CD" rather than "CL"). Then type
in the call number of the work you found useful (thus, CD=NK5730 .D73, for
example) and what you will get is a long list of call numbers, in order,
and titles of works similar to, and thus catalogued in proximity to, the
work you started out with. You can browse forward and backward and get a
sense of what's there, regardless of its physical location in the system,
a very productive kind of broad searching.
- Keywords are, of course, also helpful to searching on the Internet. They
turn up sites that have those words in their indexing information. You probably
also know that different Internet search engines tend to have different
strengths: On Netscape, LookSmart and Lycos have pretty good connections
for arts and humanities, while my favorite for arts and humanities topics,
Altavista, has moved to Internet Explorer. (I just typed in "Byzantine Art"
for Altavista and came up with over 2000 hits; visiting some of the first
40 that showed up revealed many sites I'd not yet been aware of… great hunting!).
Please remember Havice's dictum for electronic sources: "Not everything
that is good or important is on the Net, while not everything on the Net
is good or important." You're all aware of the crapola factor and should
be exercising sound critical judgement when you find new on-line sources
(the problem is more critical than in printed sources, which are more expensive
and so have been, generally, through a more rigorous vetting or weeding
process, thus eliminating some, if not all, of the junk. Because any idiot
can put up a website, and many do, the onus to exercise more critical judgement
is more fully on you…
CATEGORIES OF RESEARCH SOURCES
1. Primary Sources, created at
or about the time in history that we're interested in, or contemporary with
the works we are studying. Distinguish from secondary sources, works "about"
the past but not from the period itself. Relate to my description of the circles
around a dropped stone in a pond for why primary sources are special and important
to your research. Primary sources include written as well as visual works (which
we know through reproductions and facsimiles but which are otherwise very directly
available, in contrast to some written sources, where we have to work through
translations and so are dependent upon the skill, sensitivity, and insight of
the translator for our sense of the original work).
> You have a wonderful and very convenient collection of primary documentary
sources in your Mango text; use it as your starting point and cull from it any
primary sources that bear on your topic. Similarly, from our website, you can
find additional primary sources via the Medieval
Sourcebook, where a couple of the saints' vitae that you read earlier
can be found.
2. Reference Works,
great starting points, where you will find quick and often expert overviews
(but not a lot of detail), examples to follow up on, and bibliographic citations.
Usually reference works are too general to include in final bibliography, but
regularly they save you lots of digging and work if you start there. Examples
for this class: Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, New Catholic Encyclopedia,
Encyclopedia of World
3. Indexes
(or "indices"), such as the Bibliography of the History of Art, the
Realexikon der byzantinischen Kunst, and journals that list recent works
on relevant topics, such as the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, and on-line
listings which include reviews, such as the
Bryn Mawr Medieval Review. These tend to be more specialized and fall
into a couple of categories, but, as the more familiar reference works in 2
above, are great starting points for very specialized topics and often represent
the perspective of experts in an area, so might well find their way into your
bibliography.
4. Articles in scholarly journals,
as opposed to popular periodicals. Because journals tend to appear regularly
and deal with smaller individual contributions, they are often the best place
to look for "the most recent" as well as the more detailed kind of treatment.
5. Monographs specialized study
of one particular topic (typically for modern art, they focus on the work of
a single artist, but for our period, a study of a particular church or its decoration
or of a particular work of art or class of objects).
6. Exhibition catalogues:
self-evident, but observe that the nature of the exhibition has a lot to
do with what is included. For example, the exhibition Treasures
of Mount Athos, contains ONLY objects still owned by monasteries on
the Holy Mountain but among those are a lot of things that you might not necessarily
expect in an art exhibition. In contrast, the
Glory of Byzantium exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum was composed
of objects from a limited range of time (the Middle Byzantine period) but borrowed
from museums all over the world and pretty much focussed on what we would readily
recognize as works of visual arts. When you get to be good at "reading" exhibitions,
you will recognize how to work with their particular strengths and limitations
to find what you need. And
then there are catalogues of collections held in individual museums, such as
the Byzantine Museum in
Athens or other institutions; such collections change only slowly but also
have distinctive "profiles," so you may find collections that specialized
for certain periods or types of objects.
7. Survey-type books (such as your
textbooks): again, a great place to get started with big pictures, sometimes
more detailed info, but seldom detailed enough to wind up in your final bibliography.
8. Anthologies and collected studies:
essays by one or more authors, organized thematically or for a particular
occasion, or, in the case of a single author, a collection of works originally
published far and wide and now conveniently re-assembled. In the latter case,
be careful to note the original date of publication, when the ideas were
first put into the public arena, rather than the date of republication. You
will find a number of collected essays on the reserve list for this class, and
there exist many more such collections on relevant topics; check with me if
you haven't found one for your topic.
9. Electronic resources originated for
on-line publication, such
as the bibliographies at NetSerf, the
Medieval Sourcebook,
Labyrinth, etc.
10. Notes in other sources
such as footnotes and bibliographies. Don't overlook! Often your best source
of references to other useful materials comes in the form of the notes in an
already-useful resource. Comb these as carefully as you read the main text.
As you get further into your research, you will note some works referred to
over and over again -- and some authors similarly frequently invoked -- good
indication that they are important and worth looking up (or for).
LIBRARY TECHNIQUES
Most of you already have a fairly good working knowledge of
how a library works but here are four important tips for locating things or
finding things that at first glance aren't there:
- Have you looked in the right location? Remember that there are MANY
different libraries on campus,
besides WTY, the Art
Library, Pence Hall's Architecture Library, Special
Collections, etc., so you need to note, when you identify a work you
wish to consult, WHERE it is located as well as the call number, etc.
- Is the book/journal/whatever NOT where it's supposed to be? It may
be checked out to someone else, BUT don't despair! You can RECALL the work
and anyone who has already had it out for at least two weeks must return
it or face heavy fines. Go to the Circulation Department (main desk) for
instructions on how to complete a RECALL form and submit it NOW; alternatively,
you may do so on-line from the Circulation Department's section on the
Libraries' webpage, by typing http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/recallform.htm,
OR by requesting an electronic form from circsch@ukcc.uky.edu. The sooner
you submit it, the sooner the work will be returned (at least in theory
-- it usually works if you have not waited 'til the last couple weeks of
the semester).
- Is the book/journal/whatever NOT where it's supposed to be? It may
be misplaced, BUT don't despair! You can place a SEARCH for it and the staff
will attempt to locate the work. Go to the Circulation Department (main
desk) for instructions on how to complete a SEARCH form and submit it NOW;
alternatively, you may do so on-line from the Circulation Department's section
on the Libraries' webpage. All
too often it turns out that the work you want has gone missing (read 'stolen"
for which we have some other thoughtless user to thank) but about as often
it just turns out that the item was used somewhere else in the library and
is just temporarily off the shelf. Again, the sooner you do this, the sooner
you will have a response that you can work with.
- Does UK not own the work you're looking for? You can identify other
holding libraries via the WorldCat (for books and related items) or via
FirstSearch (for articles in periodicals) and, using your friendly art history
professor, request copies through Interlibrary Loan. Again, identify the
work you need and SUBMIT your request NOW. The sooner you initiate the process,
the sooner you can get what you need.
You may want to post queries for items your searching via our
listserv; classmates may well have encountered or will encounter items potentially
useful to you, and their knowing what your topic is will potentially be useful,
as you can share findings and resources with one another. I will ask each of
you to post a brief description of your topic, as you currently conceive of
it, to the listserv at the same time you submit your bibliographies to me.
DO NOT overlook foreign-language sources that appear relevant
to your topic. I will give extra credit to anyone whose research demonstrates
that s/he used a foreign-language source (that means going beyond just listing
it in your bibliography). You can recognize certain key words in foreign languages
(for example, "ivory" in German is "Elfenbein") and find lots of useful materials,
not least of which rare reproductions, even if you cannot read a word of the
language in question. (Sidebar: Most medieval research historians read a fistful
of languages, often with a dictionary close at hand but nonetheless adequately
to get to important research in contemporary foreign languages. Contemporary
Greek, for example, is a key to much current research in Byzantine art and civilization.)
Select now the format that you plan to use for your bibliographic
citations (Turabian, MLA, other) and follow it faithfully as you record the
sources that you consult in the course of your research. If you use it carefully
for your preliminary bibliography, you will not have to retype that portion
that you re-use in your final bibliography. After Spring Break, I will provide
you with some short "bibliographic problems" to try to figure out how you would
cite, to head off more expensive problems in your final version at semester's
end.
Note down any problems or questions that come up as you do
your research. Share them with your colleagues via our listserv and/or with
me, your teacher, via e-mail or in office consultation. Research is, at its
best, a collaborative effort and one of the points of having experts as teachers
is to provide you with help and answers as the process unfolds (NOT just at
its endpoint).
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