Getting materials not at BU
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Interlibrary Loan. Interlibrary Loan services allow current BU faculty, staff, and students to request books, articles, book chapters, and other materials that our ILL staff will obtain from other libraries. Books generally take 1-3 weeks to arrive; articles are generally delivered electronically within 1-2 days.
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ILL online request forms for all patrons except those affiliated with the Schools of Law and Medicine
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Law Library's interlibrary loan page for Law School affiliates
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Alumni Medical Library’s ILL form for Medical School affilliates
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For general inquires to the Interlibrary Loan office, please call (617) 353-3706 or email ILLMML@bu.edu.
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- BLC Cards. A Boston Library Consortium Card allows the bearer to borrow—in person—circulating material from a member library, just as you would from a BU library. Boston University faculty, staff, and students on the Charles River Campus may obtain a Consortium Card by filling out an application form. Medical Campus affiliates apply at the Alumni Medical Library. Students, faculty, and staff may borrow books from Boston College, Brandeis University, and Northeastern University with their Boston University ID's.
Featured books & ebooks
Click on book jackets to read the following e-books:
Nexus New York : Latin/American artists in the modern metropolis by
An examination of the pioneering Caribbean and Latin American artists who resided in New York prior to WWII and shaped the American avant-garde Between 1900 and 1942, New York City was the site of extraordinary creative exchange where artists could share ideas in a global context. The swiftly changing urban landscape before and between the World Wars inspired the erosion of artistic boundaries and fostered a new climate of modernist experimentation. Nexus New Yorkfocuses on key artists from the Caribbean and Latin America who entered into dynamic cultural and social dialogues with the American-based avant-garde and participated in the development of a new modern discourse. Featuring both celebrated and little-known figures of this period, including Carlos Enríquez, Alice Neel, Marius de Zayas, Francis Picabia, Joaquín Torres-Garcia, José Clemente Orozco, Matta, and Robert Motherwell, contributing authors also discuss the specific environments in which they flourished, including the Art Students League, the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, and the New School for Social Research. A fascinating look at 20th-century modernism, this book provides the first view of the important encounters between artists of the Americas.
Location: Mugar Stacks N6535.N5 N49 2009ISBN: 9780300158960Publication Date: 2009-10-27
Discoveries: Frida Kahlo, Painting Her Own Reality by
"My painting carries within it the message of pain". Frida Kahlo--born in 1907 near Mexico City--learned about pain at a very early age. She contracted polio at six, and then at eighteen suffered serious and permanent injury to her right leg and pelvis in a terrible bus accident. Young and undaunted, she went on to fall in love with the great mural painter Diego Rivera at a time when their native Mexico was going through a period of thrilling political and cultural upheaval. Rivera and Kahlo were a legendary couple--both were impassioned, lifelong communists while fervently attached to traditional Mexican Indian culture, and both were driven by a relentless artistic ambition that surmounted all the dramas that plagued their marriage. Later, Frida became the friend and lover of Leon Trotsky. She was greatly admired by the Surrealists and sat for some of the greatest photographers of her day. Her art largely consisted of self-portraits, like the famous paintings The Two Fridas and The Broken Column, though she also left many striking still-lives. In Frida Kahlo: Painting Her Own Reality, Christina Burrus assesses Frida Kahlo’s extraordinary work--a maelstrom of cruelty, humor, candor, and insolence reflecting the essence of a free, beautiful, courageous woman who concealed her physical pain behind peals of infectious laughter.
Location: Mugar Stacks ND259.K33 B8713 2008ISBN: 9780810984028Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Surrealistas an el Exilio y Los Inicios de la Escuela de Nueva York by Location: Mugar Stacks N6494.S8 S865 1999ISBN: 9788480031943Publication Date: 2000-10-01
Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923-1982 by
With its signature style that marries Cubism and Surrealism with Afro-Cuban and Caribbean motifs, the art of Wifredo Lam occupies a unique position in the history of modern art. Like many modern artists, specifically Pablo Picasso, Lam participated in the primitivist movement, drawing inspiration and imagery from non-western, pre-technological cultures. Yet, unlike European and Euroamerican primitivists, Lam, who was a Cuban of Spanish, African, and Chinese descent, was engaging with his own cultural heritage in his works. His authenticity as both "primitive" and "primitivist" challenges the fundamental tenets of primitivism and makes Lam an ambiguous, fascinating figure in twentieth-century art. This wide-ranging study explores Lam’s enduring contribution to world art history—the reclamation and projection of an African identity within mainstream art. Lowery Stokes Sims surveys Lam’s work, focusing on the period from 1947 onwards, in which he demonstrated the viability of nationalist pursuits within modernism to a new generation of artists. She traces his career and life and the critical reception of his work in Cuba and Latin America, the United States, and Europe as each locale predominated in his career. This masterly assessment of Lam’s later work demonstrates the evolution of primitivist concepts in modern art from the specifically ethnographic to the more psychic and existential. What emerges from Lam’s story is the fate of Surrealism in the postwar era as it permutated into international artistic movements such as the CoBrA, the Group Phases, and the International Situationists.
Location: Mugar Stacks ND305.L3 S56 2002ISBN: 9780292777507Publication Date: 2002-06-15
Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos by
Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor 2018 ALA Notable Children's Book 2018 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Book of 2017 Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2017 Smithsonian Top Ten Best Children's Book of 2017 2018 Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos, written by Monica Brown and illustrated by John Parra, is based on the life of one of the world's most influential painters, Frida Kahlo, and the animals that inspired her art and life. The fascinating Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, her dramatic works featuring bold and vibrant colors. Her work brought attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and she is also renowned for her works celebrating the female form. Brown's story recounts Frida's beloved pets--two monkeys, a parrot, three dogs, two turkeys, an eagle, a black cat, and a fawn--and playfully considers how Frida embodied many wonderful characteristics of each animal.
Location: Pickering Educational Resources Library Juvenile Collection ND259.K33 B76 2017ISBN: 9780735842694Publication Date: 2017-09-05
Radiant Child by
Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. But before that, he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games and in the words that we speak, and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Now, award-winning illustrator Javaka Steptoe's vivid text and bold artwork echoing Basquiat's own introduce young readers to the powerful message that art doesn't always have to be neat or clean--and definitely not inside the lines--to be beautiful.
Location: Pickering Educational Resources Library Reserve CAL 2017ISBN: 9780316213882Publication Date: 2016-10-25
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You can use the BU Libraries Search box to look for print and electronic resources available thru the Boston University Libraries. These resources include print books and journals available in the library stacks, as well as e-books and full-text journal articles.
For search tips or questions regarding the search function: see the Search Help page.
For physical items, you will need the call number and library location to locate the books or journals in the stacks. See the location chart (available by the elevators and at the research center) to help you find the floor by call number range.
Browse/Search for Films
Searchable catalogs & databases for films:
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
Search for Articles
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- Humanities Full Text / Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
These combined databases provide access to journal articles, book reviews, performance reviews, interviews, bibliographies and more from a broad range of humanities and social sciences journals.
Search across disciplines
- BU Libraries Search This link opens in a new window
BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of research material provided by the library. Resources covered by the search includes books and eBooks, journals, scores and sheet music, video and audio recordings, and other physical and electronic items held by the library. Coverage encompasses materials relating to the prehistoric and antique world through to the present.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowProject Muse provides digital access to scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarly content comes from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies. The full text resources include journal articles, book reviews and book chapters.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses This link opens in a new window
This database contains indexing and abstracts of American doctoral dissertations accepted at accredited institutions since 1861 and a selection from other countries. Masters level theses are included selectively.
Social Sciences
- Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window
Social Sciences Full Text provides access to hundreds of English language journals in the social sciences. About two-thirds of the journals are peer-reviewed.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Sociological Abstracts indexes and abstracts the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews. It also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Forty percent of the content is published outside of North America.
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Provides access to articles, books and book chapters, and dissertations that cover the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. Includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
- Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
CMMC indexes journals covering communication, mass media, linguistics, discourse, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, communication theory, language, logic, organizational communication and other closely related fields of study.
