Work I picked:

Japan, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, 1830/33, 1925.3245,

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/24645/under-the-wav…

– The best general databases include: www.jstor.org, search.proquest.com, less useful is https://scholar.google.com/.

https://books.google.com/ is great for finding books to research further and for investigating footnotes.

If you are unsure where to begin, think about what culture is the object from? Where do its materials come from? What is the object’s function or efficacy? Find sources that cover broader topics.

Do not attempt to find five sources just about the object.

Find at least five promising sources of information about the object. These sources cannot be blogposts or newspaper pieces. They must all fall into the following categories:

(at least 1) peer-reviewed articles in academic journals or chapters from books published by academic presses

(at least 1) entire books published by academic presses

(at least 1) museum or exhibition catalogues

There must be at least 1 hard-copy document (not digital) in one of the categories above. Please note that a hard-copy book or article is mandatory, whether acquired from the library, through interlibrary loan, or by purchasing it online or in a bookstore.

If you download a source or check it out from the library or order it via interlibrary loan, and it turns out not to be very helpful, you must find another source. It is therefore important that you begin acquiring sources early, perhaps even now.

List your five sources, formatting them according to the Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citation…).

Below each entry, provide a brief annotation in complete sentences. This annotation should:

1) summarize the source’s content,

2) explain why it is a good source for your chosen object, and if possible

3) tentatively situate the source within broader scholarly discourse.

For good examples of annotated bibliographies, see http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/annotated-bi… and http://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliog….

Yours do not have to be this long, but must cover the first two points above.

It is not necessary to read these books all the way through; utilize productive skimming.