Skip to Main Content

Research Guides

CIN201: Film Cultures 1: Art & Industry

A comprehensive guide to for finding the best primary source materials (1895-1968) for your Cinema Studies assignment.

Special Collections in this Platform

Search Basics for this Platform

Building a search

Harry Ransom Center's Advanced Search

Target your Searches by Collection(s)

  • The default is to search all collections. Instead try limit searches to particular collections -  uncheck 'Select All Collections' and choose  collections that interest you the most
  • Be sure to limit your search result to the time period for your topic. Click on Search by Date under the advance search window and enter a start and end time. 

BOOLEAN OPERATORS:

  • Use the dropdown menus instead of operators
  • Under "Enter Search Term" use the following dropdown menu options on the right side
    • All the words (similar to AND) 
    • Any of the words (similar to OR)
    • Exact words (similar to Quotation Marks)
    • None of the words (similar to NOT which excludes keyword)
  • AVOID using Asterisk * as a wildcard option for truncation

Filter Search Results

Sort in different ways or limiting by filters on the left side (e.g., posters).

Cite Sources

To find the citation information for a source, scroll to the bottom of the page and look for Object Description. 

Look over the Title and Description fields for the relevant info to include in your bibliography, but you may need to pull additional details from the scan (e.g., Name of Author, pages numbers). If you are unsure, contact the Cinema Studies Librarian or take advantage of Ask a Librarian Chat Service

More Search Tips

When you view a record, your original search will automatically be in the search bar which will likely produce no results or an extreme amount of results

.

To search the record, delete extra keywords and date filtering from the search bar to get results within the record. 

 

Mirador Viewer Tool

The Mirador Viewer tool allows for dynamic viewing and the ability to extremely zoom-in and see specific details of the source.