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ART391: Art after 1990

Concept Mapping

Gather Background Information

Always gather background information on a topic before diving into doing research. It supplies context information and gives you a better understanding of a topic. It is a great way to start developing keywords for better search results.

Background information on a topic can be gathered from a variety of sources, including textbooks, books, reference materials like encyclopedias, and reputable websites.

Create a Mindmap

You may have several topic ideas, and a mind map is a great way to organize your early ideas ranging from your big broad topic to more specific sub-topics or sub-categories stemming from the original. 

Bubble diagram showing steps of background research.
This is an example of a mindmap with the Main Idea within the biggest circle, with branches of smaller circles using these topic headings: When, Historical context, Key events. Where, Religion and beliefs, Cultural Context. What? Movements and styles, Materials and methods, Uses and utility. Who? Status, roles, power, Influenced by, Influenced who?. Left side states: Have you considered cultural influences, historical influences, materials and methods used, styles/periods/movements, critical response to the work.
From Gendron, H. & Sclippa, E. (2014). Where visual and information literacies meet: Redesigning research skills teaching and assessment for large art history courses. Art Documentation: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 33(2), 327-344.

How to make a concept map

  • Write down the major terms/concepts
  • Identify core, intermediate, & specific concepts
  • Draw it! Circle the core concepts and put those at top or center of your map
  • Put your more specific terms further out
  • Draw lines between related concepts
  • Label the lines
  • Revise

Keywords

KEYWORDS are words or phrases that will bring back useful results in search engines and databases. Develop keywords from your background research and concept map.

Ask these questions:

  • What do I already know about my topic?
  • What would be helpful to know about my topic?
  • Where are the discussions about my topic happening?

Look at your course materials, such as your syllabus, an assignment sheet, class readings, or class notes to identify relevant keywords. 

You may also be able to Google your question examine the search results. Are there particular websites or articles that show up? You might find that the first search result is a Wikipedia page about your topic. While you might not be able to use it as a source in your bibliography, Wikipedia articles can often reveal useful keywords to use in your search. 

For art, keywords can include:

  • The object (if it's famous enough, i.e. the Mona Lisa)
  • Type of object (i.e. funerary monument or stele)
  • Artist or school
  • Patron
  • Themes occurring in the object
  • Historical events happening at the time

When to use keywords:

  • Hunting for books and articles with the library's catalog SURF (Salisbury University Resource Finder)
  • Using library databases for articles
  • Searching the web

As you create keywords, you should also begin piecing together those keywords to create "search strings," or search strategies. You can certainly plug these keywords into the catalog and databases to see what you can find on your narrow topic, or you can elevate and expand your searching by using boolean operators, nested searches and truncation.