THTR 3402: Costume Design

CLIO Catalog

CLIO is the online catalog to Columbia University Libraries (including Barnard), but excluding Teacher's College and the Law Library who maintain their own catalogs. CLIO contains over 7 million records for books, online resources, journals & newspapers, conference proceedings, sound recordings & scores, videos, archival collections & oral history transcripts, online databases, maps & images, and more!

CLIO Search Tips:

• Use the Catalog Search to find books, journal and newspaper titles, media materials, musical scores, archival collections and databases (but not articles within databases). You can also find maps and atlases.
• Article Search allows you to search articles indexed in all of Columbia's databases
• Search for specific e-journal titles using the E-journal Title search
• Use the link to Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan when the book or media item is checked out.

Using Print Materials

Browsing print books may seem antiquated, but it can be a great way to find high-quality visual materials contextualized by the information that accompanies them. The library's print collections are arranged using the Library of Congress Classification System. This system arranges materials with similar topics in the same shelf location to facilitate browsing. You may be familiar with the Dewey Decimal System (used by schools and public libraries). These systems are similar but work in slightly different ways.

Reading a Call Number

The call number of a book can be thought of as its address. Take the book Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up ​​​​​​as an example. This book's call number is ND259.K33 A4 2018h. For this call number, the ND stands for Visual Arts --> Painting. The K in the next portion of the number refers to the author, editor, or, in this case, the subject of the work (Frida Kahlo). The last four numbers refer to the date the book was first published. You will notice from the catalog record that this call number is the same at Avery Library as well as at Barnard. The LCC system is used widely in academic libraries. One thing to note about Avery Library is that in some cases, Avery uses a unique system of classification. It's not crucial to keep this in mind, but you may notice it in your searching.

Browsing with Library of Congress Call Numbers: 

Since the catalog is arranged with a certain logic, which it must be said, is imbued with its own biases and blindspots, one can browse the library shelves by topic. I have pulled out some call numbers that might be useful for costume ideas. However, depending on your subject, you may consider other options. You can review the complete Library of Congress Classification System by following this link: https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/. 

G - Geography, Anthropology, Recreation (includes costume, dress, and fashion)

• Manners and Customs (General) GT1-7070
  • Costume. Dress. Fashion. GT500-2370

N - Visual Arts

• Visual Arts (General) – N 
• Architecture – NA 
  • Theatres – NA 6820-6845
• Sculpture – NB
• Drawing, Design, and Illustration – NC
  • Commercial art. Advertising art. NC 1280-1284 
• Painting – ND
  • Portraits ND1300-1337
• Print Media – NE
• Decorative Arts – NK
  • Costume – NK 4700-4890
  • Textiles – NK8800-9505.5
• Arts in General – NX 

P - Language & Literature (includes theatre)

• The Monologue – PN 1530
• The Dialogue – PN 1551
• The Performing Arts. Show business – PN 1560-1590
• Drama – PN 1600-3307
• Collections of General Literature: Drama – PN 6110.5-6120

T - Technology (includes photography, clothing, arts and crafts)

• Photography TR1-1050
• Handicrafts. Arts and Crafts – TT1-999
  • Clothing Manufacture. Dressmaking. Tailoring. – TT490-695
  • Home Arts. Home Craft. (including sewing, embroidery, and decorative crafts) – TT697-927

Searching in Academic Databases using Boolean Operators and Modifiers

Academic databases work most effectively when using AND, OR, and NOT or including "quotation marks" or asterisks * in your searching. The videos below do a wonderful job unpacking how these tools work.

Catalog search tips:

• If you know exactly what book (journal, video, etc.) you are looking for, you can search by Title, Author, ISBN, etc.
• To find items about a specific topic, first try a keyword search in All Fields.
• Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase: "The Thief and the Dogs".
• Use * for truncation (to find variant spellings and endings of a word): parent* will find parent, parents, parental, parenthood, etc.; wom*n will find woman, women, womyn, etc.
• For more complex search, use AND and OR (note that AND and OR must be in ALL CAPS for this to work correctly in CLIO):
  • AND finds records which have ALL the search terms you entered.
  • OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.
  • For more help with using AND and OR, check our guide to advanced/Boolean keyword searching.
• Use parentheses ( ) to group terms:  Frankenstein* AND (parent* OR father*)