Art & Art History (ARTA): ARTA 220 Media Art - Lombardi

Your specific mix of credible sources will depend on your chosen artist and may be different than your classmates, but the following will likely be most helpful: 

• reference articles from encyclopedias, guides, or handbooks
• features and articles from reputable writers and media publications
• industry and professional blogs and websites related to art or digital art
• critical essays that offer an analysis of your artist's career or works (scholarly or peer-reviewed sources)
• primary sources, like interviews with your artist, their social media posts, or the works themselves

When determining if a source is credible or not, remember to consider:

• Is it accurate?
• What qualifications or expertise does its author have?
• What is the reputation of the author or the publisher?
• Is there any detectable bias (an unfair opinion about something)?
• Does the reason it exists fit your reason for doing research?
• How does it connect or compare to other sources?

Places That Might Help You Choose Your Artist or with Finding Their Works to Showcase

Places That Might Help You Find Information About Your Artist & Their Work

Search Tips & Tricks

Trying adding these words or phrases with your artist's name to get to relevant online sources more quickly:

• conversation
• profile 
• feature
• interview
• review
• essay

You may also need to add words that describe the medium they work with to help make sure you get sources about your artist and not someone else with the same name. 

Search Tips & Tricks

Apply the filters Full Text or At My Library if they are available to remove things the libraries do not have access to from your results. 

Not finding enough information? Try adjusting your search keywords to expand your search. For example, for Robert Decker, the artist of the National Parks posters, you might also need to search for information about the WPA artwork of the 1930s and ’40s that inspired that project. Or you could look for information about other influences, such as Ansel Adams, a photographer Decker studied under. 

Enclose your artist's name in quotation marks, like this: "Robert Decker" to improve the relevancy of your results. You can also do this to search for a phrase, such as "National Parks" or "WPA Federal Art Project."

MLA Basics
MLA citation format requires in-text citations (sometimes known as parenthetical citations) within the body of your presentation and a Works Cited list that includes all your sources at the end of your presentation. 

In-Text Citations

In-text citations briefly identify a source and lead your reader to a complete citation for it on your Works Cited page. Include an in-text citation whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize an idea from a source.

The basic MLA in-text citation consists of the author’s last name or the source title (whichever appears as the first element in the corresponding works cited entry). If using a title, shorten it to the first noun, noun phrase, or if not a noun, the first word.

If paraphrasing or summarizing, place the citation as close as possible after the borrowed idea. When quoting, reproduce the source text exactly, with spelling, capitalization, interior punctuation, and italicization as it appears in the source. Place the in-text citation directly at the end of the sentence or quotation.

If quoting or paraphrasing a specific part of a work, add location information such as a page number, line number, or timestamp, in the parentheses. Do not include the p. or pp. abbreviation. If numbering is not indicated on the source, do not add your own. 

Example in-text citations:
(J. King 378)
(Carter 7; Jones 21)
(“Columbia and Challenger”)

Works Cited List

Your Works Cited list should be a separate slide at the end of your presentation. Title it 'Works Cited' and center the title on the slide. Double-space each entry on the Works Cited page. Order and alphabetize entries by author’s last name. If there is no author, alphabetize by the first word in the source’s title, but ignore A, An, or The if they appear.

Example Works Cited List Entries:
Artwork (viewed online)
Picasso, Pablo. Head of a Woman. 1932, MOMA, www.moma.org/collection/works/81148. 

Video, YouTube 
“A More Perfect Union.” YouTube, uploaded by BarackObamadotcom, 18 Mar. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU. 

Part of a website
Fong, Jonathan. “Easy and Enchanting Nature Weavings.” eHow, 6 Aug. 2022, www.ehow.com/13773305/natureweavings. 

Interview, published, with interviewer’s name given
Turner, Katie. “Advancements in Genetic Research.” Interview by Harvey McKelvey. Science Matters, Discovery Channel, 15 June 2023. 

Book with 2 authors
Witte, Stephen P., and Lester Faigley. Evaluating College Writing Programs. Southern Illinois UP, 1983. 

Book with 3 or more authors
Burdick, Anne, et al. Digital Humanities. MIT P, 2012.  

Chapter or part of a book with an editor
Frances, Carol. “Faculty Consulting.” Encyclopedia of Education, edited by James W. Guthrie, vol. 3, Macmillan Reference, 2003, pp. 772-75.

Article from a database with a DOI (and more than 3 authors)
Ballantyne, Courtney, et al. “Mindfulness and Perceptions of Physical Health: The Mediating Role of Perceived Stress.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, vol. 53, no. 3, July 2021, pp. 321–327. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000255. 

Article from database with a permalink (no DOI)
Rozett, Martha Tuck. “The Comic Structures of Tragic Endings: The Suicide Scenes in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, 1985, pp. 152–64. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2871190. 

For more guidance on citing with MLA, visit the library's full Citing Sources guide.