Radio-TV-Film: Library Research Guide

Looking for newspaper/magazine/journal articles on Radio-TV-Film topics?  This page will help get you started.

  Databases
The Library subscribes to databases that provide articles on communications topics.  To get to them, follow these steps:
        s go to the Library's homepage and click "FIND DATABASES"
        s at the right, click on "RADIO/TV/ FILM"
        s you will then see a list of databases that are perfect for finding articles related to radio, TV, and film.

KEYWORD SEARCHING: Once you are in a database, search for articles similar to searching on Google: type in keywords of what you want (e.g. television and censorship and FCC).   A list of articles will then come up.  If you see "FULL TEXT" next to any on the list, great!  You can click and read the full-text immediately.  If "FULL TEXT" is not stated, then click on the yellow "Find it" button 

SUBJECT SEARCHING: You don't have to only search with random keywords.  Random keywords can often bring up hundreds of unrelated articles, simply because the keywords appeared somewhere in the article.   Instead, change your search box to a SUBJECT search, and type a word.  This will look for articles entirely ABOUT that word, not just find that word randomly.   For example, an article ABOUT censorship, not just an article that has the word censorship in it.

Printed Indexes
To find articles older than 1985, you will need to consult printed indexes, since  databases typically don't cover older than that.  Printed indexes do the same thing as databases--let you find articles by subject, author, etc.--they are just slower because you have to look the citations up manually.  Here are some printed indexes helpful to RTVF students:
Film literature index (from 1973-1994)
Retrospective index to film periodicals (from 1930-1971)
Los Angeles Times Newspaper Index (from 1972-1984)   Update: this is now a database!  Click here
New York Times Newspaper Index (from 1851- 2004)       Update: this is now a database!  Click here