THEA 232: Costume Design

This LibGuide covers the basics of how to locate source materials for historic and/or contemporary costume design.

It includes how to search for :

• Pattern books
• Fashion plates
• Historic photographs
• Documentation of clothing items in museum and cultural heritage institutions

Make sure to explore many of the resources, as there is much to discover!

Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:

• Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
• Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.  
• Use Search.Libraries to find books and reference sources.  These sources will:
  • provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
  • REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
  • help you FOCUS your topic and
  • provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
• Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
• You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet.  This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.