LibGuides: Film and Media Studies: Home

Search the Library Catalogue

Evaluation Tips

It is important to critically analyse information before you use it in an essay, report or assignment. These websites suggest how to evaluate the quality of different types of information. For further assistance with this, please ask in the Library.

Evaluating Resources
Wikipedia: academic use
Article about academic use of Wikipedia

Information and research skills

Information and Research Skills Guide
Need help with finding and using information? Look at our guide.

Welcome

Welcome to the Subject Research Guide for Film and Media Studies.

If you have a suggestion for a resource to add - let us know

Recommended Resources from the A-Z

Use these databases to identify useful journal articles and multimedia resources. For guidance about searching see our Information and Research Skills guide.

Business Source Complete
A business, management and economics database with full text for more than 2,300 journals with more than 1,100 from academic titles. This database provides some full text back to 1886, and searchable cited references back to 1998.
Web of Science Core Collection
- This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the Citation Indexes for: Science; Social Sciences; Arts & Humanities; Conference Proceedings and Books. Use for finding journal articles and conference papers. Databases can be searched simultaneously or select specific databases using the More Settings option.
Communication Source
Provides full text access to articles related to communication, linguistics, film & media
MLA International Bibliography
Index to articles, books and dissertations on literature, language and film.
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
Full text archive of US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theatre
Humanities Index - previously British Humanities Index
Covers 1962 to date. Abstracts from over 400 sources in the areas of literature, the arts, cinema, economics, history, current affairs, popular science, religion, music and architecture.
PAO : Periodicals Archive Online
Full text backfiles of international academic journals in the humanities and social sciences. Files run from the late 18th century to the late 20th century.
Project MUSE
Project Muse provides full text access to a wide range of journals. We subscribe to the Humanities Collection only.
SocArXiv - Open archive of the social sciences
SocArXiv is a free open access archive for the social sciences. It holds working papers, preprints and published papers - some documents have links to data and code. (A pre-print is: "a manuscript draft that has not yet been subject to formal peer review, distributed to receive early feedback on research from peers").
OOIR (Observatory of International Research)
Tracks “social science” journals to continually list their latest papers. Covers Anthropology, Area Studies, Communication, Geography, History, Law, Political Science and Sociology.
Box of Broadcasts
Licenced for UK only. Archive of TV and radio broadcasts dating back to the 1990s from BBC channels, ITV, Channel 4, Film 4 and more, as well as 10 foreign language channels (Italian, French and German). Works best in Chrome or Edge. Requires registration with name and email address.
TRILT :Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching
Database of UK TV and radio programmes, including terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, and all national and many local radio stations from 1995 onwards.
MediaPlus
Previously known as MediaHub, this new service incorporates all of MediaHub's audio visual content.

Screen On line
Screenonline provides access to video clips from British film and television programmes. It is produced by the British Film Institute. It is possible to browse by time period, genre or location. Portal login required, University of Stirling staff and students only.

Recommended Websites for Film & Media Studies

Here are some recommended websites for film and media studies, send us your suggestions: library@stir.ac.uk

Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
Plot summaries, credits listings and reviews of films, ranging from early moving pictures to recent releases.
British Film Institute
Box Office Mojo
Box office data website. Contains information for different countries and individual films.
National Archives Public Information Films
View a collection of public information films online. Topics covered include public health promotion, the NHS, the welfare state, the Cold War, the Berlin airlift, the Festival of Britain and the 1948 London Olympics
British Council Film Collection
Access to over 100 films showing life in Britain in the 1940s.
Researcher's Guide to Screen Heritage
A directory of publicly available resources relating to the history of moving images and sound in the UK. It is produced by the British Universities Film and Video Council.
Roundabout from British Universities Film & Video Council
Over 600 short films made in the 1960s and 1970s by the Central Office of Information to promote British manufacturing and showcase the Commonwealth to cinema audiences in Asia.

British Pathé Collection
Access to over 85,000 historic films covering the period 1896 - 1976. Playlists include sport, inventions, days that shook the world, war footage and fashion.

News on Screen
Index of British cinema newsreel releases between 1910 and 1979. Contains 160,000 records, some of which include digitised documents such as souvenir programmes to accompany recording and links to Pathe newsreels.
Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
Describes itself as "a biographical guide to the earliest years of moving pictures, 1871 - 1901". Search by name, country of group (actors, women, etc.)
Left Field Cinema
Left Field Cinema provides alternative analysis of mainstream films, unearths hidden masterpieces in world cinema, and examines the works of the greatest and most influential film makers.
JustWatch
Use JustWatch to find out where you can view a film or TV series in the UK. Covers streaming providers and cinemas. Also includes film synopses and cast lists.
European Film Gateway
ccess to historical archival materials from 16 film archives across Europe. Provides a cross-searchable database of digital content including selected films, film posters and images.
Cineuropa
Useful source of news about European cinema. Includes an index of films and profiles of the film industries of European countries. Site is available in English, Spanish, French and Italian
UniFrance
UniFrance supports, analyses and raises the profile of French films worldwide. The website is available in French and English, as well as Spanish and Japanese.
The Reith Lectures 1948-2011
Podcasts of the Reith Lectures from the BBC from 1948 - present
BBC Genome Project - Radio Times listings 1923 - 2009
Find out what was on television or radio between 1923 and 2009. Use this resource in addition to TRILT (see databases listed above)

Channel 4 Press Packs
Digitised versions of 'press packs' - information supplied to the press about forthcoming broadcasts on Channel 4. Covers the period 1982 - 2002.
EU Screen
Access to freely available multimedia resources (video clips, images, audio and texts) from European broadcasting bodies and film and TV archives.

Public Moving Image Archives and Research Centres
Listing of public moving image archives around the world
Ad*Access
Based at Duke University, USA, Ad*Access presents images and information for over 7000 advertisements printed in US and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
Google Trends
Find out what people search for on Google. Provides charts showing breakdown by city, region and language. Useful for tracing the impact of a news story.
PAMCo
Readership statistics for newspapers and magazines in the UK

CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives)
An umbrella organisation for social science data archives across Europe. The CESSDA Catalogue provides access to research data from archives across Europe covering around 6000 studies distributed by members of the CESSDA European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The Catalogue enables users to locate datasets, as well as questions or variables within datasets. Data collections include sociological surveys, election studies, longitudinal studies, opinion polls, and census data from the European Social Survey, Eurobarometer and the International Social Survey Programme.