Global Modernism Assignment Guide

Fall 2006 - Sandy Isenstadt
Prepared by Hannah Bennett

Assembling a Bibliography - Assignments 2a and 2b

After reading the instructions for assignment 2a, you might think, ''there are more people in my group than pages required for this assignment; it should be a piece of cake to knock out!" Understand that the work required for a scholarly bibliography is just as important as work put into a research paper. Like a research paper, a bibliography - of any length - must demonstrate resourcefulness, creativity, and critical thinking. It is very simple to throw together a 10-page bibliography on Mies van der Rohe by pulling citations from Orbis alone. The real work comes in when evaluating resources in terms of how they can or cannot help you develop your thesis.

Citation Software

Before your group gets started, consider sharing a folder in RefWorks, a citation software, which can automatically format bibliographies consisting of a variety of resources (from Orbis, online indexes, web sites, archival material, images) in any citation style. Ask a librarian to show you how this can work; it is a real time saver and makes life much easier when you are in a pinch to complete your assignment. Let the software worry about where the periods and commas go. For more information on RefWorks (it's free for you, after all!), click here or contact your librarian.

As you can see from the assignment description, your group prepares a beginning bibliography together - Assignment 2a - and then in Assignment 2b, each group member will annotate two sources included in the group bibliography. The idea is that at the end of the exercise, your group will have compiled an annotated bibliography (2 - 3 page annotation per person appended to a 2 - 3 page group bibliography, presented as a single document) on your chosen theme. Below is an example of how a group might get started with their collaborative project.

Let's say your group has chosen "Modernism and the Domestic Interior" as its theme. Begin by generating questions - any questions - about the theme and/or specific interior spaces.

What makes an interior space "modern"? how does it (or doesn't it) reflect domestic living and does the design follow or dictate "domestic living", i.e., form following function? what is the intended purpose of the design and what do the design choices signify? what are considered to be key projects or texts on this subject and why? how do specific building materials affect a space's "modern-ness"? Is there anything traditional or standard about specific "modern" designs? what is resilient about modern vernacular design?

Finding the answers to these sorts of questions will lead your group to a wide variety of primary and secondary resources like journal and newspaper articles, theses and dissertations, architectural drawings, city histories, architecture histories, etc.

To understand which sources are the best for you, beginning by looking at the following:

Researching a Building
Understanding Different Types of Analysis
Architecture Resources Comparison Chart: It's all about timing; this guide quickly shows you date coverage for important architectural resources.

While you may not speak the languages of all the countries represented in your class, it still is worth tracking down resources in those languages; you could find some valuable images and/or useful bibliographies. Orbis will search for your term in all the library records; so an English search term will retrieve records for Japanese books, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, etc. However, you may have a lot of luck if you cast your research net with foreign language architectural terms on the web, in database searches, with print indexes, etc. To assemble such a list of terms, try looking in the following places:

Architecture Dictionaries & Thesauri

Suggested Subject Searches in Orbis:

• Architecture --Dictionaries --Polyglot
  • Architecture -- Dictionaries -- [Language]
    • Architecture -- Dictionaries -- Vietnamese
• Architecture -- Dictionaries & Enclcyopedias -- [Language]
• Building --Dictionaries --Polyglot

Suggest Resources / Example Titles:

• Dictionary of translated names and titles - Art Reference - NX80 R66 1985 (LC)
• Dictionary of architecture and building trades in four languages: English, German, Polish [and] Russian - LSF - NA31 Z36 (LC): List of English architectural terms with German, Polish, and Russian equivalents. No definitions. Terms from architectural history and the modern building trades. Concludes with lists of German, Polish, and Russian terms that give the English equivalents.
• Elsevier’s dictionary of architecture in five languages : English, French, Spanish, German, and Dutch - Arts Reference - NA31 E56 1988 (LC)
• A glossary of Chinese art and archaeology.- SML East Asia Library Reference, Rm 219 - N7340 .H3 1961 (LC)
• Historic architecture sourcebook- Arts Reference - NA31 H56 (LC). Probably the most comprehensive one-volume dictionary of terms for architectural features and building types from prehistoric times down through the 19th c., including some transliterated terms for the Far East in Chinese and Japanese. Many illustrative drawings.
• Inventaire général des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France. Architecture: méthode et vocabulaire - Arts Reference - NA31.P47 Classified arrangement of historical architecture and construction technology terms, with illustrations keyed to the terms. 21. Kadatz, H. Wörterbuch der Architektur (1980) NA31.K3 Art reference German terms, mainly historical, with German definitions.

Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT): The AAT is a structured vocabulary of around 34,000 concepts, including 131,000 terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture. While it will provide English-only variants of a term (mostly), it is helpful in determing which terms you may want to translate.

Union List of Artist Names (ULAN): The ULAN is a structured vocabulary containing around 120,000 records, including 293,000 names and biographical and bibliographic information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN): The TGN is a structured vocabulary containing around 912,000 records, including 1.1 million names, place types, coordinates, and descriptive notes, focusing on places important for the study of art and architecture.