According to ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis Full Text (PQDT), fifty-four dissertations have cited the Dictionary of Art Historians in the last fourteen years, (2004-2018). The Dictionary has had a long history assisting scholars ever since it’s first electronic appearance in the 1990s but came into higher profile with the emergance of the internet as a scholarly research tool. The edited collection on the history of the College Art Association, 2011, The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association, included liberal reference to the site. But newer scholars, frequently outside the field of art-historical studies, have consistently cited the DoAH in their doctoral research. Like many scholars building digital research tools, we’ve been (pleasantly) surprised at the uses for a tool originally designed to assist the narrow area of art historiography.
Research in how the database is used helps us develop a tool better designed to assist researchers studying historiography, biography, genealogy, intellectual history and cultural methodology.
We’d love to hear from users of the Dictionary about other ways the tool is being used. Contact the editor, Lee Sorensen, at contact@arthistorians.info or https://arthistorians.info/contact.
Lee Sorensen