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Library Guides

Art, Design and Architecture

What resources should I use?

The disciplines within the School of Art, Design and Architecture use a very broad range of sources, possibly the most broad of all the areas. You will need to use resources related to your practice but you will also want to draw upon the resources relating to what you are exploring within your practice.

Below are a list of the main types of resources you may wish to use within your time here as well as some information on where to find those resources. Some resources may be suitable to all disciplines (e.g. books, eBooks, journals) while others may be more useful to certain subjects (e.g. Architecture and Built Environment may use more legislation, Publishing may rely more on business resources). There is a separate page for Subject Specific Databases.

Identifying what type of resource you are using is also key to appropriate referencing. You can find more on referencing on the Referencing and Plagiarism page or use our Library Skills hub to learn more about different types of resource.

Library resources for Art, Design and Architecture

bookThe easiest way to find a book is to search on Primo. Type in the author's name, title of the book or search by keywords. Limiting your search to books, journal titles, etc. from the drop down menu will help narrow down your results.

Make a note of the class number so you can find the book on the shelf.

You may also wish to browse the shelves but remember that not all books will be in the same location as some will be relevant to other subjects too.

Very rough guide to book locations
Topic Library Level Shelfmark
Publishing 1 070.5
Media 1 302
Bookmarking, print & typography 0 686
Artists 0 708.9
Architecture 0 720
Interior Design 0 729
Graphic Design & Illustration 0 741.6
Design 0 745.1
Painting 0 750
Prints/Printmaking 0 760
Photography 0 770
Film/Filmmaking 0 791.43

 

 Link to guidance on using Primo

We also have different types of book materials, such as Rare Books, Artists Books and Zines. You can find out more about these in the Special Collections page. These require an induction into the collections prior to access.

As well as physical books the Library also has a number of eBooks. An advantage of these is that you will be able to access them wherever and whenever you want.

Ebook Central and Ebook Collection include a large number of our books. You can find links to these below as well as some of our other eBook platforms you may find useful.

Our eBooks can all be found within Primo but they are listed at title level only - Primo cannot search the full text of an eBook. Therefore you should use Primo if you are looking for something very specific, e.g. you know the title and/or author of the eBook you are looking for. Simply click the green Online access link to open the eBook.

However, because of this, searching only on Primo means that you might be missing eBooks with useful content. Try searching inside the eBooks using their own websites. Some of these are listed in the eBook collections shown below. A search in one of these collections will search the full text and might pick up eBooks with useful chapters or sections that Primo would not find.

Whether you locate an eBook via Primo, or by using one of the eBook websites, you can view online, save/print chapters and sometimes download books for limited periods, depending on the licence and where it has been purchased. Discover more about finding and accessing eBooks.

journal article iconMost of our articles are available via electronic journal subscriptions.

Search Articles in Primo:

You can use Primo to conduct searches through journals that the library subscribes to and this will guarantee that you have access to anything you find. However, for your dissertation/ research project you will want to find a more specific range of resources.

Use Databases:

Databases include books, journal and magazine articles and conference proceedings among other item types, both items that the library subscribes to as well as items the library does not subscribe to.They allow you to conduct deeper searches than Primo does, using advanced search skills to retrieve more results and more relevant results.

You can also go into Databases A-Z and use the drop-down subject filter to find the most appropriate databases for your subject: A-Z Databases

Print Journals.

We also hold some physical journals on Level 0. A full list of these can be found below.

You can browse them or look in the list to find out where the index for the journal is. You can then search that database using the journal name and any key words to look for your key words within the database.

         A brief and helpful video on reading journal articles effectively.

           

In the library we have several subscriptions to galleries to receive all their exhibition catalogues. They are not all together as they are usually with other resources of the same artist or topic.

The best way to search is to use Primo > Books, journal titles etc. > Name of Gallery plus Exhibition Catalogue

i.e. Tate St.Ives exhibition Catalogue.

We take exhibition catalogues from the following galleries/ institutions:

Annely Juda

Kunsthalle Bern 
Arnolfini gallery

Modern art Oxford :

Artangel gallery

Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris

BALTIC centre for contemporary art

 New museum of contemporary art, New York:

Barbican art gallery

Photographers' gallery, London:

Centre for contemporary arts, Glasgow

Serpentine gallery, London:

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Tate Britain, London:

Fruitmarket gallery, Edinburgh:

Tate gallery, Liverpool:

Hayward gallery (SBC) touring shows

Tate Modern, London :

Hayward gallery, London

Tate St. Ives:

Henry Moore institute, Leeds

Victoria and Albert museum:

Imperial war museum, London

Whitechapel art gallery, London:

Kettles Yard gallery

Waddington gallery, London:

Newspapers are a good source of information for exhibitions - particularly reviews and commentary.

Because each Newspaper review comes from a different viewpoint or agenda, you get a wide spectrum of criticism of an exhibition or artist that should help you give a balanced opinion.

The main access to a multitude of Newspapers on line is the the database Lexis Library.

Some sources of images copyright-cleared for educational use:

Box of Broadcasts in particular is a subscription tool we have that is highly recommended. Other recommendations of archives are listed below.

Legislation is of particular use to Architecture and Built Environment but law may be useful to other subjects too. The main legal databases are listed below, but you may also want to click through to this Legislation page that has a lot more information on navigating legislation, both UK and international.

Standards and regulations are often used in the field of Architecture and Built Environment but may be of use in other subjects, such as Design. Our main sources for Standards are listed below. For more information on finding and accessing these, please follow this link to standards and regulations.

The British Library runs a service called EThOS, which enables individuals to register online at http://ethos.bl.uk and access UK PhD theses. EThOS currently provides details of more than 250,000 theses, many of which are available electronically and can be downloaded from EThOS including all Plymouth PhD theses. 

Plymouth theses can also be accessed from PEARL (the university repository) via Primo along with a selection of Masters theses.

Please note: EThOS is currently out of action until further notice due to the British Library hacking that happened some time ago.

PDQT Open

PQDT Open is a source of (mostly) North American theses that have been published as Open Access which complements the British collection held in EThOS.