American History in Video is a rich collection of video online that facilitates the study of American history, with 2,000 hours and more than 5,000 titles on completion. Analyze historical events and the presentation of historical events over time through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries. Make playlists at the click of a mouse!
To identify these resources in the online catalog, look for the subdivisions, correspondence, interviews, sources, diaries and personal narratives. Any of these terms can be used in the keyword search mode; for example, vietnam and personal narratives.
Journals/Magazines:
America: History and Life includes citations to film reviews from a number of history journals. Limit your search in the document type section by entertainment review.
Film & Television Literature Index provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 380 publications (and selected coverage of 300). For reviews, limit your search to document type, entertainment review.
International Index to the Performing Arts includes reviews from journals and magazines, including Variety. From the advanced search screen, limit your search by document type, film review.
JSTOR, a database of archived issues of academic journals. From the advanced search screen, you can limit your search by type (reviews). Because it is an archival database, JSTOR does not provide access to latest issues of journals (usually the last 3-5 years are not accessible), so this is not the database to use for reviews of recently released films.
Readers' Guide Retrospective is an excellent source to identify articles/reviews from popular/general interest magazines published between 1890-1982. It indexes over 200 magazines published in the United States.
Academic Search Premier and Proquest are two large general databases that provide access to magazine and journal articles. In Proquest, from advanced search, limit your search by document type, review. In Academic Search Premier, limit your search in the document type section by entertainment review.
Newspapers:
LexisNexis Academic is a great resource for newspaper reviews. Coverage varies by title but the majority are available from the 1990s to the present. For reviews, along the left-hand side select news (blue bar), then select "all news" from the options. On the next screen, you can limit your search to movie reviews.
Proquest Historical Newspapers are also good options. They include: Chicago Tribune (1849-1987); Los Angeles Times (1881-1987); The New York Times (1851-2007); The Wall Street Journal (1889-1993); The Washington Post (1877-1994). From advanced search, you can limit your search by document type, review. This doesn't also work, however, so try your search first without this limitation.
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Black Newspapers provides access to scanned images from Atlanta daily world (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Cleveland call and post (1934-1991), Los Angeles sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam news (1922-1993), Norfolk journal & guide (1921-2003), Philadelphia tribune (1912-2001), and the Pittsburgh courier (1911-2002). From advanced search, you can limit your search by document type, review. This doesn't also work, however, so try your search first without this limitation.
America's Newspapers provides full-text access to hundreds of local and state newspapers, but there is no way to limit to just film reviews. Coverage varies by individual title but the majority are available from the late 1980s/early 1990s to present.
Government Sources -- hearings, publications by Congress, and much more -- can be very useful. Two databases to consult are --
Proquest Congressional includes indexing, abstracting of the CIS/Index to Publications of the U.S. Congress. Indexes: House & Senate Documents, Reports, Hearings and Prints (1789-present). Includes full text for: Committee Prints (1830-present); CRS Reports (1916-present); Hearings (1824-present, incomplete); House & Senate Documents (selected full text, 1995-present); House & Senate Reports (selected full text, 1990-present); Bills and Public Laws (1989-present); Key Votes (1987-present); U.S. Code (Current); Statutes at Large (1789-present); Members & Committees (including campaign & financial info, statements, votes, profiles); Congressional Record (1985-present); Political News (The Hill, 1995-present; Roll Call, 1989-present; Washington Post, Sec.A, 1977-present).
U.S. Congressional Serial Set provides full-text access to the reports, documents, and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. At present, the date coverage is 1817 to 1994.
