LibGuides: Film & Media Arts: Find Articles & Reviews

Find Articles and Reviews

About Peer Review

If your professor asks you to find "scholarly" or "peer reviewed" journal articles, be sure the article you find is from a source that has gone through the peer review process. Many databases offer a search filter to limit to only journals that are scholarly or peer reviewed. You can also check the journal title in the Ulrich's database (linked below) to see if a title is peer reviewed.

Ulrich's Periodicals Directory This link opens in a new window A directory with detailed information about scholarly journals, popular magazines, newspapers, and newsletters, including discontinued publications. It provides international coverage in more than 900 subject areas. Terms of Use.

Have a citation? Check if we have it!

Say your professor tells you about an article you should read, or you find a citation for an article in a book and you want to read the whole article... what do you do? Follow these steps:

Search the Journal Finder for the title of the journal in which the article appears
Locate a library database that has the full text coverage of the journal in the year your article in published in
Search the database for the full text article you want to read

Try it now in the Journal Finder below:

Journal Finder

Multidisciplinary Databases

These databases index articles from a variety of subjects and sources. These are good places to start your research:

Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window Peer-reviewed, full-text articles from journals and reference sources covering the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature, and other subjects. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1980-present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window An interdisciplinary ebook and journal platform to support scholarship and teaching. Provides access to select current subscriptions as well as the archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Terms of Use.

Film & Media Arts Journal Databases

These databases index articles from journals within the subject of Film & Media Arts. These are useful when looking for articles specifically within your discipline:

FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals This link opens in a new window An international compendium of information on film and television covering film literature from 300 periodicals from 1972 to the present. The database also features print sources for 22,000 silent films. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1972-present.
Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Film Indexes Online This link opens in a new window Cross-search Film Index International and American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1900-present.

AFI Catalog

Use the American Film Institute Catalog to find information on films including titles, running times, cast, crew, directors, subject matter, and more. This is a great resource to start with when learning about a film. It also has partial citation information (breadcrumbs) at the end of each article that can help you find film reviews and other articles written about the film. Use the Journal Finder to see if the library has full text of any reviews mentioned in the bread crumbs.

American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog This link opens in a new window An authoritative resource of American film information, covering the history of American cinema comprehensively from 1893 to 1975, with full or short records for films from 1976 to the present. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1893-present.

British Film Institute (BFI) Collections This database contains information collected by the BFI since 1933. It holds over 800,000 film titles – including television programmes, documentaries, newsreels, as well as educational and training films – and is updated daily. However, less than 50% of listed titles are actually represented in our collections, therefore the database only partially relates to physical material.

Use Discover! to Find Film Reviews

Use the following tips to help you find film reviews in Discover!

In the Discover! keyword search box below, type the name of a film in quotation marks (ex. "Gone with the Wind").
You might also try adding the year the film was released and/or the word film (Ex. "Gone with the Wind" film 1939).
Once you have some results, limit your results to the year before through the year after the film was released (ex. 1938-1940). This will limit your results to only items published around the time the film was released.
You may want to limit the source types to newspapers and/or magazines, since these are the types of periodicals that film reviews are usually published in.
Click on the titles to read more about each entry.
If you find an entry that looks like a winner, click the full text .pdf link (if available) or click "Check for Full Text" to cross search other databases for the full text of the review.

Searching the Internet

You may want to try searching the web for content related to the film or aspect of film & media arts you are researching. Google scholar is a good place to start looking for articles that may be freely available on the internet. If you do find something you like when searching online and are not able to find it in full text, be sure to check the Leatherby Libraries journal finder for the article. You can also request articles you cannot locate in full text through interlibrary loan.

Interlibrary Loan Can't find the article you need in full text? Follow this link to the Leatherby Libraries interlibrary loan service. This service allows you to request items the Leatherby Libraries does not own. We can try to borrow these items from other libraries for you.

Film & Media Arts