Library Guides: Cinematic Arts and Film: Library Databases

What is a Database?

What is a Database?

A database is a searchable collection of materials - mostly journal or newspaper articles, but sometimes other types of material such as encyclopaedia entries, market research reports, financial information, etc. The Library subscribes to almost 300 separate databases and each may contain many thousands of individual sources within them.

Databases allow students to search for information on a topic by (amongst others) keyword, subject, author, title, and phrase. They are a very efficient way to find relevant information.

Most databases allow students to restrict their results to those of higher academic quality, e.g. from peer reviewed or scholarly sources, the contents of which have been written by experts. Full text articles are provided where available, either within the specific database or via the button.

The Library's Information Skills Tutorial will help you identify your keywords, use search operators, truncation / wildcards and much more.

Film & Cinematic Arts

AFI Catalogue
The American Film Institute’s authoritative resource of American film information, covers the history of American cinema comprehensively from 1893 to 1975, with full or short records for films from 1976 onwards. Part of Proquest's Screen Studies Collection
American National Biography
Box of Broadcasts
BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education, recording programmes from over 75 free-to-air channels on a rolling 30 day EPG. There's also a searchable archive of over 2.2 million broadcasts.
British Universities Film and Video Council Databases
Moving Image Gateway: Researcher’s Guide; Database of DVDs, News On Screen and Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching – TRILT
Communications Abstracts
Containing over 235,000 records, Communication Abstracts covers major journals in communication, mass media, film and other closely-related fields of study.
FIAF (International Index of Film Periodicals)
The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Index to Film Periodicals is a bibliographical index offering in-depth coverage of the world’s foremost academic and popular film journals from 1972 to the present day. Part of Proquest's Screen Studies Collection
Film Index International
A major information resource for entertainment films and personalities produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute. Part of Proquest's Screen Studies Collection
JSTOR Arts & Sciences III
This arts and humanities collection contains 150 titles making available journals in language and literature, as well as important titles in the fields of music, film studies, folklore, performing arts, religion, and the history of art and architecture
MediaPlus (Alexander Street Press)
MediaPlus (Formerly JISC Media) provides a single point of access to major multimedia archives purchased on behalf of members. It enables cross searching and exploration of TV news, documentary films, still images and classical music.
O'Reilly Learning
Contains full-text ebooks, videos and other content covering video production, cinematography, audio and sound production,screenplays, cameras, and other multimedia and technical topics.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism
Largest comprehensive resource for the study of modernism. Fully cross-referenced, regularly updated by expert subject editors and covering 8 key subject areas: literature, architecture, visual arts, music, dance, theatre, film & intellectual currents.
Screen Studies Collection (Proquest)
A major information resource for entertainment films and personalities produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute. This collection includes FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute; AFI Catalog and Film Index International.

Biography

USearch - Cross database searching for journal articles

With the USearch Discovery tool you can search a large number of our library databases in one session.

Try out USearch using the live search box below.

Proquest Complete

Proquest is an online supplier of subject databases, whose content you can search in different ways. Each of these database is listed separately on the Library's A-Z listing.

However, you can also select 'P' and search through the Proquest Complete Collection. This contains almost 50 individual databases, some of which are grouped into sub-collections. You can search through all of the databases at the same time or by sub-collections, e.g. Screen Studies Collection.

You may also choose to search through the Social Science Premium Collection which will contain information on the societal aspects of film, cinema and media.

Using Google Scholar

Google's Scholar search finds journal articles or other high quality information. It limits results to academic-related sources, such as peer reviewed journals, research based working papers, books and other scholarly resources.

However, unlike Library databases, it has limited search options, restricted search size and prioritises keywords appearing first in your search strategy, so we recommend that it should not be your sole source of information. Use in combination with appropriate Library databases.

To export any references to the Refworks database, go to the Scholar settings, choose the Bibliography Manager option and select 'Show links to import citations into' Refworks.

For more information on Google Scholar, including search tips and citation metrics see: http://scholar.google.co.uk/intl/en/scholar/about.html

If you intend to use the 'full' Google, check Settings for advanced search tips to improve the accuracy of your search. Northampton University also has a useful video - Ten Tips for Google Searching.

Cinematic Arts and Film: Library Databases