Holt Library: Heritage Arts: Research

Links

North Carolina Pottery Center
We North Carolinians have long been enchanted by our potters who are able to transform lumps of clay into objects of startling beauty. That beauty and the stories behind it, old and new, is showcased by the North Carolina Pottery Center. Visit us and learn more about pottery and potters past and present.
Contact us at info@ncpotterycenter.org for more information. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, and out of concern for our staff and visitors, the North Carolina Pottery Center is closed to the public until further notice. We look forward to seeing you when we reopen.
Folk Pottery Museum of NE Georgia
The Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia showcases the handcraft skills of one of the South's premier grassroots art forms, and explores the historical importance and changing role of folk pottery in southern life.
The Log Book
The Log Book is the international publication for woodfirers and those interested in woodfiring and wood-fired ceramics, be they professional, educator, student, or enthusiast. Supported only by subscription The Log Book is a non-profit publication with no commercial advertising.
Intended as a forum for the discussion of the many diverse aspects of wood-fired ceramics, articles are published on historical, traditional and contemporary woodfiring, together with reports on specialist woodfire related events worldwide. Reviews of books, videos, and DVDs of relevance to woodfiring are also included.
With some 400 articles published to date, The Log Book is now the single largest repository for articles in the English language on the subject of wood-fired ceramics; a significant resource documenting the aesthetics, the materials, and the processes of woodfiring and wood-fired ceramics.

Research databases

Research Database, or Google?

Research databases are more focused than what you can find with an Internet search engine, and include the full text of many magazines, journals, and newspapers that are otherwise only available through paid subscriptions.
Google searches result in popular sources that are not necessarily peer-reviewed or scholarly (ie., not always suitable as a source for research).

What does "peer reviewed" mean?

A peer-reviewed journal is one that uses a system of reviewers who are the professional equals of the principal author of an article or book. Many academic journals utilize the peer review process. Several databases carry peer-reviewed journals and allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed titles.

"Scholarly":

Scholarly sources are written by subject experts for an audience of experts. They are not always peer-reviewed, but they are considered more credible than sources written by non-experts.

Databases provide:

citations
easy ways to save, print, or email items and links
test practice, learning opportunities, and study techniques
hints on items for further study or related topics

Research and how to do it: SHORT VIDEO

Research Companion This link opens in a new window
Video tutorial: Learn how to create a research project.

The research process

6-step process for writing a research paper
This guide breaks down the process from choosing a topic to conducting research to writing your final paper.

Student guide: persuasion
Learn how to effectively argue your position in speeches, research papers, and debates.

Cite sources: how to
Give credit to the sources you found.

How to create a Works Cited page
Properly compile the list of all of the sources you used in your paper.

Sample articles

The Heritage Arts Imperative by Toelken, Barre
Toelken discusses the importance of arts and heritage and suggests that it is imperative that people pay closer attention to the arts that arise from what has been loosely called "cultural heritage"-the ongoing accumulation of expressive forms that represent the shared tastes and experiences of living cultures more than they demonstrate the unique strides of particular brilliant artists. He expounds upon a common topic with which many are familiar to one extent of another, but one that has never received enough serious conversation: the importance, the validity, the necessity to include folk arts, heritage arts, and fine arts in connection with each other.
[author adds: TO BEGIN WITH, I NEED TO MAKE A DISCLAIMER: I will be referring to the culturally based arts of several different kinds of communities, including ethnic and national groups to which I do not belong. I do not pretend to be a spokesperson for any of them. Indeed, I urge you to find a way to listen to the voices of those communities and to experience their arts directly, not only through my well-intentioned but peripheral comments.]

Native American Art Today in the Great Plains: An Overview of the Exhibition Contemporary Indigeneity: Spiritual Borderlands
While many American Indian artists still draw from traditional imagery and art-making practices, they, unlike their non-Native counterparts, are expected to exhibit their "Indianness" regardless of the media in which they work [...] as contemporary artist Edgar Heaps of Birds points out, Native artists are the only members of the art community who must prove who they are. Native American artist and scholar Rick Hill questioned the validity tests for "Indianness" that artists are subjected to, which ask: "Does he live on the reservation?"
American art as an investment: new evidence from an alternative approach
We have attempted to provide new evidence regarding American art as an investment vehicle, using tools typically employed to evaluate the investment worthiness of financial assets.
Metaphors, Myths and Making Pots: Chewa Clay Arts
In this essay I argue that pottery and other clay forms made by Chewa women in central Malawi collectively reflect recurring themes that resonate throughout Chewa society (FIG 1). My approach is to seek relatedness, searching for the likeness of patterns and motifs from one social space (domestic) to another (ritual). This approach is derived from the idea of "connectedness" suggested to me by Philip Ravenhill, that the tiniest detail could be connected to a much wider range of semantics, objects, social realms, and ideas. [original research]