WRIT 125:
The Living City on Page and Screen

Fall 2009 · Professor Ford

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Key research guides
Creating a bibliography
Evaluating what you find

• The encyclopedia of ethnic groups in Hollywood - Clapp Ref PN1995.9.M56 M85 2003
• Contemporary North American film directors : a Wallflower critical guide - Clapp Ref PN1998.2 .C67 2002
• International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers
• Encyclopedia of film themes, settings and series - Clapp Ref PN1997.8 .A76 2001
• Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide - Clapp Ref HQ1115 .G74 2003
• Black City Cinema : African American Urban Experiences in Film - Clapp PN1995.9.N4 M33 2003
• Cities and Cinema

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: a keyword search for city in film leads to these subject terms (and more books on your topic):
  
  
• Cities and towns in motion pictures
• Violence in motion pictures
• Science Fiction Films - History and Criticism
  
• for a more complex search, use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (race or ethnicity)
• use truncation to save time (assimilat* for assimilation, assimilating)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept "string"

Some generally useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Motion pictures - social aspects
• Motion pictures - United States - History

tip: browse the subcategories under these subjects -- there are many narrower categories that may prove helpful

To find critical analysis of your film's director, do a subject search:

• Scorsese, Martin - Criticism and interpretation
• Allen, Woody - Criticism and interpretation
• Lee, Spike - Criticism and interpretation
• Hawks, Howard - Criticism and interpretation
• Wong, Kar-wei, 1958- - Criticism and interpretation

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• Academic Search Complete - The world's largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database. Dates of coverage vary by title
  
• MLA International Bibliography - Articles on literature, linguistics, film, and folklore, from all cultures, 1963 to present.
• FIAF International Index to Film Literature Plus - An index to articles on film and TV from 300 academic and popular film journals, including full text from the most important journals, from 1972 to present
• Film & Television Literature Index Full Text - Articles on film and television theory, writing, production, cinematography, reviews, and more, 1914 to present
• JSTOR Collection of key scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences & natural sciences, starting from the first issue but not the latest 3-5 years. tip: do an advanced search to limit your search by discipline, language, type, etc. to avoid being overloaded with results that are not relevant.
• Google Scholar - excellent tool for interdisciplinary topics that "fall through the cracks" of databases - click on "Find It @ Wellesley" to link directly to our databases if we have the full text, or to request through Interlibrary Loan if we don't

• Cinema and Media Studies Research Guide
• Women's and Gender Studies Research Guide
• Sociology Research Guide
  

• Our guide to citing your sources
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Danielle Boulay• last modified: October 26, 2009