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Art Research Guide

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Find books, articles, media, and course reserves

Browse the Stacks

Books and periodicals on the fine arts are located in the N call number area.

The N call number section is dedicated to artistic medium. Works on individual artists can be found in different parts of the library. For example, books on Picasso's paintings would in ND, while books on his printmaking would be in NE.

Use this abbreviated guide to browse the fine arts call number areas:

N                             VISUAL ARTS (GENERAL)
NA   ARCHITECTURE
NB SCULPTURE
NB 1330-1685 Sculptural monuments
NB 1750-1793  Religious monuments & shrines
NC DRAWING, DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION
NC 845-915 Graphic art materials
NC 950-996 Illustration
ND PAINTING
ND 49-813 History of painting
ND 2550-2733 Mural painting
NE PRINT MEDIA
NE 1-978 Printmaking and engraving
NE 1000-1352 Wood engraving
NK DECORATIVE ARTS
NK 1135-1149 Arts and craft movement
NK 1648-1678 Religious art
NX ARTS IN GENERAL

See the full N Classification here.

Other materials related art and art history are located as follows:

TR                         PHOTOGRAPHY
TR 15  General history of photography
TR 139 Collective bio. of photographers
TR 640-688 Artistic photography
TR 820 Photojournalism   
PN 6700-6790 Graphic novels, comics strips, manga

How to Read a Call Number

Books at HSU are organized by the Library of Congress Classification System. This means that the books are grouped by broad subjects alphabetically and numerically within a subject. This system helps you locate books on those topics by keeping them all together. Each book has it's own call number to help you find it in the broader subject and can also be given a more specific topic within the broad subject. HERE'S AN EXAMPLE Title: The Encyclopedia of Arthurian Literature. Call Number: DA 152.5 A7 C64 1992.  This book has a subject of History with a sub-class of Great Britain (DA) and second sub-class of Early and medieval to 1485 (152.5). HOW TO READ A CALL NUMBER The first letters represent the broad subject (DA), The first set of numbers identify a more specific topic of a subject (152.5) The second set of letter/number combinations represents the author or the title of the book (A7 C64) and the last number is the year published (1992)

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