LibGuides: TC 302: Idolatry & Iconoclasm / Peers: Enter the Scholarly Conversation

How to identify experts

When you're choosing a place to search, you have to start by asking, who are the experts on this topic and where would their works be published?

International Bibliography of Art (IBA)
Unlimited users.
Indexes scholarly literature on Western art and is the successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). The database includes records created by the Getty Research Institute in 2008-09, with new records created by ProQuest using the same thesaurus and authority files.
The database will grow by 18,000 records per year, ensuring unbroken coverage of journals that were indexed in BHA and IBA prior to 2010. The initial data set created by the Getty Research Institute in 2008-2009 covers scholarship up to 2009, including retrospective records for material published in previous years, and in some cases the new ProQuest indexing will also cover retrospective years in order to fill gaps in coverage.
Publications covered include at least 500 core journals, with an emphasis on specialist and rare titles that are not covered by other indexes, plus detailed coverage of monographs, essay collections, conference proceedings and exhibition catalogues.

Religion & Philosophy Collection
Unlimited users.
Updated daily. A comprehensive database covering such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. Offers more than 300 full text journals, including more than 250 peer-reviewed titles. In addition to the full text, indexing and abstracts are provided for all journals in the database. Full text information in this database dates as far back as 1975.

Web of Science
Honestly, I found the most non-art discussion about iconoclasm here.
JSTOR
Journals from all over the place in a full text search.

No easy answers here, either. This is a question I get from graduate students.

Here are some ideas for figuring this out:

Lay out your assertions in the paper - how much evidence do you have for each assertion? Do some assertions need more evidence (sometimes you can tell you need more evidence because you have begun to ramble rather than using evidence to back up claims succinctly)? Is anything backed up in a repetitive manner (i.e., 4 sources that say the same thing)?
Lay out the major assertions in your paper and explain them to a friend. Let her ask you questions. Can you answer those questions using evidence? Are there gaps you need to fill? Did you make some leaps?
Visit with me (or any librarian) and/or the Writing Center. We'll sort this out!