ES 220 Blacks & the Cinema
Interim Interdisciplinary Programs Liaison Librarian
Library Research Guide
Professor Adrienne Seward | Block 6 (Spring 2011)
Getting Started
It’s best to start your research with general materials and work your way towards more specific items, such as subject-specific books and journal articles. A topic overview in a reference book (e.g., encyclopedia, atlas, chronology, etc.) can help you to brainstorm ideas, narrow an existing topic, and glean keywords for future searches. Plus, the bibliographies within these books will lead you to other useful resources.
Take a few minutes to browse the reference books about Black Cinema. Call numbers generally begin with PN1995.9 .N4. The sources listed below are a good place to start, and you can also browse these related subject areas in the TIGER catalog: African Americans in Motion Pictures and Blacks in Motion Pictures.
African American Films Through 1959 (Reference PN1995.9 .N4 R54 1998)
Black American Cinema (North Basement PN1995.9 .N4 B45 1993)
Black Film as Genre (North Basement PN1995.0 .N4 C68)
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood (North Basement PN1995.9 .N4 B59 2005)
Frame by Frame, Vols. 1-3 (Reference PN1995.9.N4 K57)
Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema (Reference PN1995.9.N4 B433 2007)
Finding Books
You have access to books from three sources — TIGER, Prospector, and WorldCat:
- TIGER includes all of the books owned by Tutt Library
- Prospector gives you access to books from 22 regional libraries
- WorldCat lists library holdings nationwide
If you have questions about any of the catalogs, feel free to ask me or the librarians at the reference desk for help — that’s what we’re here for.
TIGER
The fastest way to find books is to search the TIGER, the CC library catalog, by keyword or subject:
Use broad keywords from your class reading to begin your search. Then, refine your searches by adding keywords. Once you find an interesting book, you can click on the subject headings listed in the catalog record to find similar works.
For more ideas on creating effective TIGER searches, visit Advanced Keyword Search and Ten TIGER Catalog Tips.
Browsing
When you go to the stacks to find a specific book, take a minute to browse the books around it. Quite often you’ll come across other useful books on the same topic.
Prospector
If the books you want are checked out or not owned by Tutt Library, you can request them through Prospector, which gives you access to materials (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.) from libraries throughout Colorado and Wyoming. However, plan ahead: it takes three to five business days for the materials to arrive at the Tutt Library circulation desk for check out.
WorldCat (Interlibrary Loan)
Materials not available in TIGER or Prospector may be requested through Interlibrary Loan via WorldCat
. Be sure to set up an ILLiad account before making a request.
Finding Journal Articles
After you’ve reviewed general resources, it’s time to start looking for journal articles, which typically have a very specific focus. Since you will be searching within full-text articles, abstracts, or citations, you may want to use more specific keywords or a larger group of keywords to prevent irrelevant hits.
General databases like Academic Search Complete
and JSTOR
are a good place to start. However, you will also want to search cinema databases as well as databases in related subject areas, such as Black Studies, history, and sociology, to name a few. To see a list of databases by topic, visit Tutt Library’s list of Databases by Subject page.
Using the Right Keywords
It’s important to remember that the words we use to describe topics change over time. For instance, today we use the terms cinema or film, but in the past, motion pictures and movies were the common terms. If you were to search only cinema, you might miss out on valuable documents written during a different era.
Searching as many related terms as possible will give you the best chance of finding resources. To help you find those related terms, the Library of Congress Authorities and Vocabularies has a handy thesaurus. Simply plug in a keyword, and it will give a list of related terms used throughout recent decades.
Finding Full Text Articles
Not every article you find in a database will be available in full text. If you come across one that’s not, just follow the black, white, and gold Tutt Link logo to find out if the full text appears in any other databases at Tutt Library or if you’ll need to request the article through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Learn how to use Tutt Link to find full text.
Sometimes you’ll have a full citation from another source. In this case, the fastest way to find out if we own the article is through Find Journals. You’ll see whether or not Tutt Library has the journal and which issues we own. If we do not have the full text of your article, you may request it by filling out the Interlibrary Loan Request Form.
Articles requested through Interlibrary Loan may arrive in as little as 24 to 48 hours. However, you must be registered with ILLiad to make requests (see First Time User Registration for Interlibrary Loan).
Research Databases
General
Academic Search CompleteCoverage: 1865 - currentLarge database with extensive full text access to journals, in addition to abstracts and indexing. Subject coverage is general and broad.
Google ScholarCoverage: N/ARetrieves citations to a wide variety of research papers, thesis, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. Check for possible full text by using Colorado College Links or Colorado College e-texts buttons next to the citations.
JSTORCoverage: late 1800's - most recent 0-5 yearsArchival access to many scholarly periodicals. Some titles include current issues while others have a moving wall imposed on them.
Project MuseCoverage: variesProject Muse Standard Collection of core scholarly titles from John Hopkins University. Offers current and back issues. Please note: we do not subscribe to the Premium Collection. We have access to most, but not all, Project Muse titles.
Film & Communications Databases
American Film ScriptsCoverage: 1903 - currentAmerican Film Scripts Online contains over 1000 scripts, together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimilie images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Many of the scripts have never been published before, and some scripts were never produced.
Communication & Mass Media CompleteCoverage: Early 20th century - currentCovers all areas of communication and mass media. Includes full text for over 200 titles and citations to research journals, as well as major journalism reviews, recent encyclopedias, and handbooks in the area of communications studies. Some journals are indexed back as far as the early decades of the 20th century.
Film & Television Literature IndexCoverage: 1980s - currentIndexes journals covering all areas of film and television, from reviews to film & TV theory to more technical aspects.
Humanities International CompleteCoverage: 1929 - currentA comprehensive humanities database, with almost 500 full text titles and indexing and abstracting for more than 1,700 titles. Subject areas include (but are not limited to) literature, philosophy, the arts, history, culture-oriented and multi-disciplinary humanities titles with some coverage going back as far as 1929. This database replaces Humanities Abstracts.
The Internet Movie DatabaseCoverage: 1892 - currentSearchable movie database for international films and TV shows produced in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
MLA International BibliographyCoverage: 1963 - currentLiterature, languages, linguistics, and folklore from over journals and series published worldwide.
Black Studies
Black Drama, 1850 To PresentCoverage: 1846 - currentContains the full text of over 1,400 rare and hard-to-find plays written from the 1850's to the present by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African Diaspora countries. Search by author, title, subject, date, full-text, etc. Cross-searchable under North American Theater Online.
Black Studies Center
Black Studies Center contains interdisciplinary essays by leading scholars, interview videos and transcripts, journal and literary indexes, newspapers, and selected dissertations. Trial subscription ends March 3, 2011.
Black Thought And CultureCoverage: 1700 - 2006Black Thought and Culture contains 1,200+ sources covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Includes non-fiction works, interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material. Also includes the Black Panther newspaper from 1967-1980. Allows for advanced browsing and searching by author, race, gender, year, subject, nationality, etc. Some materials are cross-searchable under Social and Cultural History.
Federal Surveillance Of African Americans, 1920-1984Coverage: 1920-1984Collection of documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. The collection includes COINTELPROs file on Black Nationalist groups from 1956-1971; also contains FBI files on notable figures such as Malcom X, Paul Robeson, Jesse Jackson and W. E. Dubois, as well as groups such as the Black Panthers and NAACP. The investigations are illustrative of conservative and government concerns over communism, socialism, civil rights, and other issues of this era. Part of Archives Unbound.
History, Social Sciences, and Gender Studies
Alternative Press IndexCoverage: 1969 - currentAlternative Press Index is a classic bibliographic database of articles from hundreds of international alternative, radical, and left periodicals. API is now part of EBSCOHOST in two databases: Alternative Press Archives, 1969-1990; and Alternative Press Index, 1991-current. The link above will search both simultaneously; API is cross-searchable with other EBSCOHOST databases.
America, History & LifeCoverage: 1863 - currentCovers American history.
Gender Studies DatabaseCoverage: pre-1972 - currentCombines the Women's Studies International and Men's Studies databases with sexual diversity issues and gender-engaged scholarship. Source documents include professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses & dissertations, and freely available full text articles & documents on the Web.
Historical AbstractsCoverage: 1967 - currentCovers world history.
PsycINFOCoverage: 1887 - currentComprehensive international database of psychology. Covers the academic, research, and practice literature in psychology. NOTE: You can search both PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES at the same time. Contact Reference Desk x6662.
Social Sciences AbstractsCoverage: 1983 - currentInternational, English-language periodicals in sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, political science, and law. Broader coverage than SocIndex.
Historical Newspapers and Magazines
Accessible ArchivesCoverage: 1728 - 1900Access to archival fulltext newspapers including the Pennsylvania Gazette, African American and Civil War Newspapers, and Godey's Lady's Book.
American Periodicals Series OnlineCoverage: 1740-1940Over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. May be cross-searched with ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Black Studies Center
Black Studies Center contains interdisciplinary essays by leading scholars, interview videos and transcripts, journal and literary indexes, newspapers, and selected dissertations. Trial subscription ends March 3, 2011.
Historical Newspapers (Proquest)Coverage: 1800's -Provides complete, full-image access to historical articles from the Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times from 1881 and the New York Times from 1851. For current online articles use Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.
LEXIS-NEXIS Academic UniverseCoverage: 1977 - currentAccess to popular press material such as newspaper articles. Also contains law review articles.
Newspaper SourceCoverage: 1985-currentFull text for more than 40 major U.S. and international newspapers; also contains selective full text for more than 330 regional U.S. newspapers and full text transcripts from television and radio news.
Periodicals Archive OnlineCoverage: 1665-2000Online periodical archive containing the digitized backfiles of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences.
Periodicals Index OnlineCoverage: 1665-1995Electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, including both scholarly and popular titles. Every article is indexed.
Readers' Guide RetrospectiveCoverage: 1890 - 1982The premier index to popular periodicals. No full text links, but Tutt owns a large percentage of the magazines/journals indexed by this resource. Continued by Readers Guide Abstracts.
Citations, Notes, Bibliography
In the course of researching your paper, you will need to keep track of citations to dozens of books, articles, and other publications. The library now subscribes to a web-based program called RefWorks
that can help you do all this. Using RefWorks, you can easily keep track of what you have read and insert footnotes or endnotes and bibliography entries into your thesis in the proper citation format.
The first time you go to the RefWorks
site you will need to create a personal login. You can use their online tutorials to learn how to use it, or attend one of the library’s sessions on using RefWorks (watch your email for announcements).
RefWorks Database Saves
RefWorks FAQ
RefWorks Tutorials
Write-N-Cite
You might also find the library’s Style and Writing Guides web page useful.
Research Help
Contact the Reference Desk, 9 a.m. – 10 p.m., x6662, IM=tuttlibrarian
Contact Daryl Alder, Interim Interdisciplinary Programs Librarian, x6669, Tutt Library 201
dlindsay-alder@coloradocollege.edu, IM=tuttalder