Yes, always an interesting topic. Thanks for letting us know about that research guide, Sara, I’ve bookmarked it. An ARLIS/NA colleague asked a question awhile back, and I’ve dug up my answer to it to see what I said at the time. It was
in reference to James Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, which requires some knowledge of variant names, biblical history and such, but is very robust compared to other sources, apparently. I actually have that source listed on one of
my LibGuides, which hasn’t been updated in a while (although I just added a link to Sara’s guide too):
https://libguides.princeton.edu/artfaq/iconography .
Here was my response to the Hall question:
I have never been fully satisfied with the suggestions I’ve made about iconography/iconographic sources to library users over the years. I know
that ArtStor allows some keyword searching but metadata varies (when one wants to search for the subject of a particular work). In addition to my guide (URL above), we have add’l. titles in our ref. room, one being Hall’s Illustrated Dictionary of
Symbols in Eastern and Western Art (Olderr, 1992) with small illustrations next to entries. I also just saw the Reverse Symbolism Dictionary: Symbols Listed by Subject, which I never use nor recommend so need to take a look at it.
I notice we have this but haven’t looked at it (recently, at least): https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/1793016 .
I recall adding this title to the ref. room here awhile back: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/956874 and don’t think I’ve looked at this one by the same author: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/1006888.
I don’t think I’m aware of any digital resources in this area. Perhaps Studies in Iconography (journal) could be useful to help investigate this question. I found this in my Web bookmarks: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/special-collections/photographic-collection/iconographic-database .
We are in the process of determining whether we will pursue this resource here at Princeton: http://arkyves.org/ (update: we do have access to it now and I have used it a bit for certain types of questions).
-Rebecca Friedman, Marquand Library, Princeton Univ.
From: ARLIS/NA List <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of
MacDonald, Sara
Sent: Tuesday, February 4, 2020 10:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] Help Requested
Iconography! A favorite topic. We have a subject guide with the name
Signs & Symbols, which is the LCSH. I hope this is helpful.
Sara MacDonald
she/her
Director for Library Services
University Libraries
University of the Arts
320 South Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-717-6282
[log in to unmask]
uarts.edu | #uarts
@uartslibraries
On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 10:35 AM Stock, Matthew C. <[log in to unmask]> wrote: