UCLA Arts Library Theater, Film, and Television Blog

The Los Angeles Conservancy offers a popular architectural walking tour of the Broadway Historic Theatre District on Saturday mornings. On November 9, the Conservancy is also offering a special one-day tour called “L.A. NOIR-chitecture: A hard-boiled tour through the historic city.” Information can be found on the Conservancy website.

Patrons interested in theaters featured on the Broadway tour can consult the Conservancy’s walking tour brochure (Arts Library Reference NA6846.U62L675 1992), and the book The Last Remaining Seats: Movie Palaces of Tinseltown (Arts Library Reference NA6846.U62L573 2004).

LA as Subject presents “Archives Live” the 3rd Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar.Southern California history comes alive in exhibits by 65 historical collections and archives-including L.A.-area universities, libraries, and community organizations. Browse rare collections, consult with experts, and learn about family genealogy, online research tools, preserving your own history, and numerous other topics. Presented by L.A. as Subject, the bazaar offers a wealth of resources for exploring Los Angeles history. L.A. as Subject-an association of archives and collections hosted by the USC Libraries-is dedicated to improving the visibility, access, and preservation of archives and documenting the rich history of the Los Angeles region. Educational programs, discussions about history with local authors, and documentary films about the hidden stories of Los Angeles neighborhoods are scheduled throughout the day.

For more information about LA as Subject, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/arc/lasubject/

This year, the Arts Library is hosting two drop-in workshops for new graduate students in conjunction with the Graduate Writing Center and other libraries on campus. The focus will be on using article databases to find journal articles online. All are welcome to attend.

Performing Arts focus
Diana King, Film, Television, and Theater Librarian and David Gilbert, Music Librarian
Thursday, October 9th, 1:00-1:50pm
Location: Arts Library seminar room (5th floor, Arts Library), 1400 Public Affairs Building

Art, Architecture, and Design focus
Janine Henri, Architecture, Design, and Digital Services Librarian
Friday, October 10th, 1:00-1:50pm
Location: Arts Library seminar room (5th floor, Arts Library), 1400 Public Affairs Building

The full list of workshops available is listed here.

The UCLA Library now subscribes to two interdisciplinary resources from Greenwood Press that are particularly useful for undergraduate courses. Both include full text content relevant to the fine and performing arts, including biographies, primary documents, audition monologues, photographs, and art/architecture information from a range of reference resources.

African American Experience: http://uclibs.org/PID/113794

Latino American Experience: http://bibpurl.oclc.org/web/19631�

I’m pleased to announce that we now have an electronic subscription to the new journal Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind. UCLA’s own Vivian Sobchack is on the editorial board. A description of the journal is below:

“Projections is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal that explores the ways in which recent advancements in fields such as psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, genetics and evolution help to increase our understanding of film, and how film itself facilitates investigations into the nature and function of the mind. The journal incorporates articles on the visual arts and new technologies related to film. The aims of the journal are to explore these subjects, facilitate a dialogue between people in the sciences and the humanities, and bring the study of film to the forefront of contemporary intellectual debate.”

The UC system now subscribes to C19: The Nineteenth Century Index (via ProQuest on the Chadwyck-Healy platform). More information is available below. This can be particularly useful as a tool to use in conjunction with the Times of London Digital Archive.

C19:
http://uclibs.org/PID/130229

“The most comprehensive and dynamic source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. The C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole’s Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.5 million books and official publications, 71,000 archival collections and 16.3 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 12 bibliographic indexes, including almost a million records from the ongoing digitization of British Periodicals Collections I and II.”

The UCLA Library has just licensed the digital version of the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, thanks to the collective efforts of the Research Library, the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies/Clark Library, as well as our good friends in the History and English departments. From the vendor’s website:

The newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) represent the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media. The present digital collection, that helps chart the development of the concept of ‘news’ and ‘newspapers’ and the “free press”, totals almost 1 million pages and contains approximately 1,270 titles. Many of the Burney newspapers are well known, but many pamphlets and broadsides also included have remained largely hidden. Newly digitized, all Burney treasures are now fully text-searchable in Gale Digital Collection.

While the date range of the collection obviously precedes motion pictures, there is much content of potential interest to theater history and anyone researching this time period. In the Advanced Search, you may also pre-limit to documents with images. 

Access (UCLA users and IP addresses only): http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/start.do?prodId=BBCN

Beginning May 27,  researchers may have noted a new search box available on the Library’s webpage and in the UC Melvyl Catalog for “Next Generation Melvyl.” This is a pilot, combining the capability to search catalogs for UCLA, UC Libraries, and Libraries Worldwide (via WorldCat) simulteneously. It also includes some journal article indexing. There is a news item about this trial in the Spring 2008 Library News for the Faculty. Our current UCLA Catalog and the existing Melvyl Catalog will both still be up and running during the trial.

The interface for Next Generation Melvyl has different features that have not been available before in our library catalog, such as the ability to log in and write reviews, find books in Amazon.com, bookmark items using del.icio.us and other tools, and find UC books digitized by Google. It’s also important to note what is NOT included in the current pilot, most specifically “affiliated” collections like the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Ethnomusicology Archive, and the ability to search course reserve titles or sign in to personal account info. I recommend reading the “Help” documentation for Next Generation Melvyl, which explains how to search and frequently asked questions.

Finally, I want to encourage users at every level to fill out the survey form on Next Generation Melvyl after giving it a try. Your feedback on this trial is very important.

One of my goals for this year was to acquire a few electronic reference books that would assist students and faculty working from home. With support from both College and Young Research Libraries, I’m happy to say that we now have access to three useful film studies titles online. We also have print copies available for use in the Arts Reference Collection. These include:

Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film [Based on a 4-volume set, this encyclopedia provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to film and film studies, covering such aspects as production, national traditions, studios, genres, critical theory and film history.]

History of the American Cinema [Online version of the classic 10-volume set, with each thematic volume separately or cumulatively searchable]

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers [Online version of the 4th edition, providing coverage of films and filmmakers, including legendary films, actors and actresses, directors, writers and other production artists. Entries include a detailed essay written by an expert; biographies; filmographies; comprehensive credits; major awards; and updated bibliographies, as well as photographs.]

All of these titles are available under the “Arts” category of the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Individual catalog records are being created for each of these, so they will soon also have separate title-level links. Interdisciplinary researchers may also be interested in other new additions to the Virtual Reference Library, including online editions of the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, the Encyclopedia of Political Communication, and the New Encyclopedia of Africa.

Please let me know if you have any questions about accessing and using these new resources.

An important note to faculty and students on a frequently-used database: 

For many years, the UC System has subscribed to the database Expanded Academic ASAP as our general multi-disciplinary periodical search tool. After a thorough investigation of the content available in Expanded Academic in comparison to other competitor databases, UC Libraries made the decision to replace this database with Ebsco’s Academic Search Complete. The Ebsco database contains more scholarly journal content than we are now getting (5,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 4,600 peer-reviewed journals), and was chosen as the most suitable choice to serve the general searching needs of faculty and students. As with most aggregator databases, some content is available online, while other publications are only indexed.

Access Academic Search Complete at: http://uclibs.org/PID/126936

HINT: One useful aspect of Academic Search Complete is that you can cross-search its content with other EBSCOhost databases, which can be selected from a scroll menu on the main search page. These additional databases include Business Source Premier and Business Source Complete (good for film industry questions!), America: History and Life, LGBT Life, Newspaper Source, The Nation Archive, Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts, and MasterFILE Premier (a useful source for searching popular press magazines not always included in Academic Search Complete).