North Seattle Community College North Seattle Community College
Library & Media Services

Research Guide for The Craft of Film: Coding and Decoding

 

Prepared by Elinor Appel, NSCC Librarian

Class website via WebCT (this will open in a new window)

 

Background Information

In general, your best bet for background information -- origins, settings, themes -- is reference materials like encyclopedias and dictionaries. If you get a chance to come to the library at North, you'll find excellent, authoritative articles on film in reference books such as:

  • The Cinema Book [Ref PN 1994 C489 1999]
  • The Film Encyclopedia [Ref PN 1993.45 K34 1979]
  • The Oxford Companion to Film [Ref PN 1993.45.09]

Sometimes you will find reference books that you can check out, for instance this is available upstairs:

  • Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style [PN 1995.9.F54 F55 1992]

If you can't make it in to the library, try an article from the Encyclopedia Britannica online. Just select "Britannica.com" from the list of reference databases available at North. If you are off campus, remember to access Britannica through the library website and sign in with your SID and last name.

Finding Articles

To find articles for your research projects, start by searching the periodical databases listed on the library web site. These databases contain full-text articles from publications ranging from The New York Times to Newsweek to truly scholarly journals like the Journal of Popular Film and Television. A good database to begin with is ProQuest.

Search the databases by combining search terms using and. Here is how a basic and search would look in ProQuest:

If you are searching for articles about a film, put quotes around the film's title. This will improve your results:

And don't forget to limit your search to full text so that you can read the whole article online:

Note that you can also limit your search to scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are publications written by and for academics (faculty and students). The articles in these journals are reviewed (or refereed) by other academics (or peers). If you were to pick up one of these journals and open it you would find that the authors always support their statements with footnotes, endnotes, graphs, and so on. In a nutshell, a scholarly journal:

  • is written by and for the academic community
  • has an academic editorial board (usually affiliated with a university)
  • often has "journal" or "quarterly" in the title
  • contains thorough documentation/citation information
  • contains few if any ads

You will also find good articles in reputable popular and trade publications. For more information on the different kinds of publications in a periodical database, take a look at this tutorial. And welcome to the world of academic research!

Finding Books

To find books (or books with articles) on your topic, search the catalog, which you will find under Search for Books on the library website.

Start with a Keyword Relevance Search, for instance:

To find out if a book is available, click on the title and look at the bottom of the record. If you find the book is at another library (South or Central), simply click on "Request Item" to have the book sent to North.

For books you can read online, limit your search to e-books (you'll find this on the right) :

Citing Your Sources

You will be citing your sources according to MLA citation rules. No doubt your instructor has provided you with citation guidelines. You can also access guides on the NSCC library website.

Students often have trouble sorting out how to cite electronic resources. Here are some excellent guidelines:

Websites

It isn't always easy to tell whether you have found an authoritative resource that will be acceptable to your instructor. For instance, though all students refer to it, Wikipedia isn't considered authoritative at this time. If you must, check the references supplied by Wikipedia for background information -- but don't cite Wikipedia itself!

Limiting your search to educational websites is a good way to start. Do this by adding site:edu to your Google search. More Google search tips:

Some online resources (besides IMDb & Wikipedia):