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The Shape of Things: The Rhetoric of Design

PWR 1GMT - Winter 2013 - Instructor: Taylor, M.
Last Updated: 17-Jan-2013

Guide for PWR 1 The Shape of Things: The Rhetoric of Design taught by Mark Taylor.

Subject Librarians

Peter P Blank
Head, Art & Architecture Library
Art & Architecture Library
(650) 725-1038
Katharine A Keller
Reference Librarian/VRC Cataloger
Art & Architecture Library
(650) 725-9274
Anna M. Fishaut
Assistant Art Librarian
Art & Architecture Library
(650) 725-1037
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Subjects

Art
Architecture
Design

Related guides

Design

Suggested Databases

This list of databases will lead you to articles, essays in collected works, exhibition catalogs, etc., in the literature of art history and beyond.  Some databases cover broad subject areas and several are more art and architecture-specific, like Design and Applied Arts Index, the Avery Index and the image database, ARTstor.

Academic search premier [electronic resource].
Ipswich, MA : EBSCO Pub.
A multidisciplinary database which provides full-text for over 4,650 scholarly publications, more than 3,600 of them peer-reviewed. Includes topics in the social sciences, humanities, general science, education and most areas of academic study. Abstracts and indexing provided for 8,200 journals in the collection. Coverage is from 1965 to the present.
Design and applied arts index [electronic resource] : DAAI.
[England] : Design Documentation
International index to over 130,000 annotated references from more than 500 design and craft journals and newspapers published from 1973 onwards, and data on over 50,000 designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops and firms. Research articles are covered, along with topical news items, conference and seminar reports, and book, video and exhibition reviews. Major areas of coverage include: Product design, Interior design, Graphic design, Ceramics, Glass, Jewellery, Textiles, Furniture, Fashion and clothing, Illustration, Typography and type design, Metalsmithing, Retail design, Architecture, Industrial design, Sustainability, Advertising, Packaging, Theatre, Vehicles, Exhibitions, Book design, Web design, Computer aided design, Computer graphics, Animation, Garden design, Landscape architecture, Urban design, Education, Design management, Inclusive design, Universal design, Design history.
JSTOR [electronic resource]
[New York] : JSTOR [New York] : ITHAKA, 1995-
Good general starting point. Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis. Note: The most recent five years of the journals indexed are not included.
Project Muse. Premium collection.
Features a collection of online scholarly journals that focuses on the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Project Muse is similar to JSTOR but the content is current and limited to Johns Hopkins Press publications .
Avery index to architectural periodicals [electronic resource].
[Bethesda, Md.] : CSA Illumina [distributor]
Offers a comprehensive listing of journal articles published worldwide on architecture and design, archaeology, city planning, interior design, and historic preservation. Avery indexes not only the international scholarly and popular periodical literature, but also the publications of professional associations, US state and regional periodicals, and the major serial publications on architecture and design of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Expanded coverage includes obituary citations. Coverage is from 1934 to the present.
ARTSTOR [electronic resource].
New York : ARTstor
Close to a million high resolution images pertaining to the arts and related disciplines: anthropology, archaeology, history, etc. Extensive architecture collection. Search by keyword, title of work, or creator (artist/architect); limit by date, location, etc. Image files are easy to download.

Suggested Reference Sources

Reference works help you gather background information on your topic and will often lead to good bibliographies.

Oxford art online [electronic resource].
[Oxford, England] : Oxford University Press, c2007-
OAO gives you full text access to a suite of art reference works: Grove Art Online, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.
Oxford reference online [electronic resource].
Premium collection Oxford ; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, c2002-
Contains the texts of more than 100 reference titles published by Oxford University Press.

SearchWorks Tips

SearchWorks is the name of the Stanford Libraries catalog. It contains records for books, ebooks, DVDs, journals, archival material and more. It does not contain records for articles. SearchWorks uses relevancy ranking in displaying search results, much like Google. You can do an “everything” search or, using the drop-down on the right, specify author, title or subject terms as your search type. You can then refine your search results by the index on the left, including format, location, language, date and more. 

Advanced search: This type of search allows you to search by author, title, topic, etc. by plugging the search terms into their own fields. You can then specify ALL search terms or ANY of your search terms. Think of this as AND and OR, respectively.

SearchWorks records include linked Subject terms which describe a particular item. Below are some Subject terms which relate to this class. Note how a main heading may further subdivide by subheadings like Social aspects, Environmental aspects, Catalogs, Exhibitions, etc. Linked headings will help you discover more material on your topic.

Design—Social aspects

Sustainable design

Fashion design—Environmental aspects