Most reference resources are considered "tertiary" source materials. These books and websites provide background information and overview of a subject or concept. Tertiary sources are not usually intended to be read in their entirety. Instead, they are most often used to clarify terms and concepts about a particular topic. Tertiary sources can include:
Image Source: ILGWU women marching in a Labor Day parade with placards that read, "'60 is the year to vote reaction out." by Kheel Center used under CC BY 2.0.
To find books and other materials housed in the library, use the Library's catalog. The GIL-Find Catalog allows you to search for Books, eBooks, DVDs, and other materials housed in our libraries.
Discover Research Starters are short, citable summaries and authoritative overviews of popular topics. Often includes links to relevant articles, images, videos and audio clips. Simply search your topic in Discover. If a Research Starter is available, it will appear at the top of the results list as pictured below.
The History of Modern Fashion by
Shortlisted for the Costume Society of America Millia Davenport Publication Award (2016), this lavishly illustrated book looks at the history of fashion from 1850 to 2010. Taking a decade-by-decade approach, Daniel James Cole and Nancy Deihl explore the history of fashion as a lively and dynamic manifestation of twentieth-century culture. Covering chronological changes in womenswear, menswear, and childrenswear, the book looks at the dissemination of style and the mechanisms of change, at the relationship between fashion and the visual, applied, and performing arts, the intertwined relationship between fashion and popular culture, the impact of new materials and technology, and the growing globalization of style. Illustrated with photographs of costume from museums and images from the fashion press including editorial photography, illustrations, and advertising, the book will include insights into icons of fashion and the clothes worn by "real people", providing a valuable visual reference for the reader.
The Berg Companion to Fashion by
An essential reference for students, curators and scholars of fashion, cultural studies, and the expanding range of disciplines that see fashion as imbued with meaning far beyond the material.
Critical Fashion Practice: From Westwood to Van Beirendonck by
There is a new form of design practice within the contemporary fashion industry which is active in complex forms of social commentary and critique. While fashion in the modernist era has shown signs of criticism and subversion, these were either in the form of subcultures or perversions, such as punk or BDSM styling. Today, however, these genres have been absorbed into the fashion industry itself, meaning that "critical fashion" is now far from limited to the subcultures from which it came. This book explores this new space for criticism within the popular fashion sphere to demonstrate how designers are disrupting conventions, challenging beliefs and stirring change from within the system itself.Critical Fashion Practice considers a range of contemporary designers across the globe, from the US to Japan, whose conceptual designs embody this critical language, including case studies such as Rei Kawakubo's deconstructive silhouettes for Comme des Garçons and Walter Van Beirendonck's sadomasochistic menswear collections, amongst other key players such as Miuccia Prada, Vivienne Westwood and Viktor & Rolf. Arguing that the rise of critical fashion coincides with a noticeable decline in the criticality of art, Geczy and Karaminas go beyond slotting fashion into previously established art theories. Conceiving a new cultural role for fashion that affords insight into identity, class, race, sexuality and gender, this book shows how fashion can not only reflect and comment on, but can also be a part of social change.
