Researching Historical Periodicals/Newspapers for Film Studies
Movie reviews, advertisements, feature articles, and other materials relevant to film studies can often be challenging to locate, especially if they're reviews that are older than a few weeks or reviews that are from anything but major newspapers like the New York Times.
There are lots of reasons for that, but one frequent reason is that many publications archive their reviews after a given period of time to get you to pay for the article if you really need it and don't have access to it any other way.
Also, many newspapers and magazines that were in business at the time you're researching may no longer be in business, and their archives are either lost completely or else available only at certain libraries in paper or microfilm formats.
However, searching for film reviews and film articles has gotten easier in the last three to five years, partly because more material related to film is being digitized all the time.
One purpose of this research guide is to help you find movie reviews, advertisements, publicity materials, features, and other materials from contemporaneous sources, using the resources that are available to you online or at the Vanderbilt libraries.
