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.

Specific Collections in this Platform

Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a massive online repository of scanned publications, video, sound recordings and more.

Notable Collections

Please note that Internet Archive collections are publicly created and not grouped by year. This is just a select few of the collections available, See their collections page for all collections available

Search Basics for this Platform

Key Links

How to use Internet Archive 

Overview of Internet Archive's layout, search interfaces, and how to navigate content (e.g., digitized magazines, journals, books, audio visuals collections and more) for this assignment. 

Search - A basic guide  

  • Different ways to search 
  • How to sort search results
  • How to search within a collection
  • Use the metadata lists to filter your results by Media Type, Year, Topics

Internet Archive's Tips & Troubleshooting

  • How to narrow your search results by title or using quotation marks and Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) 
  • Search for multiple subjects 

Building powerful, complex search queries 

 

Filter Search Results

You can filter your results by selecting one of the filtering options on the left-hand side of the results page.

To see all options within a filter, click on 'More' link at the bottom to open a pop up window. Screen shot of Internet Archive filters on left side of results screen. Highlighting 'Media Type'

The following filters are available:

  • Media Type
  • Availability
  • Year
  • Subject
  • Collection
  • Creator (who uploaded the document, not the document author)
  • Language

 

 

Save Sources and Searches

IMPORTANT

When downloading files from Internet Archive, ensure you are only downloading the pages you need. It will default to download the entire text, which if too large can crash your browser. 

Saving within the Platform

To save the source within Internet Archive, you must create a free account by selecting "Sign Up | Log In" in the top right hand corner. then selecting to favourite the source. 

Screen shot Internet archive highlighting sign up / log in option in upper right corner.

 

Cite Sources

All citations from sources on Internet Archive must be done manually. Some items will have the citation information in the details section on Internet Archive, but most will require gathering the information yourself from the source text. 

There are tips on how to find that information in your Quercus Course, but you can also seek help from Ask a Librarian online chat or contact the Cinema Studies Librarian or Innis College Library

 

Citing from an Item with Multiple Issues

Occasionally, Internet Archive will group multiple issues of a publication into a single item. When using a source from one of these items, ensure you are citing only the issues used. For example, the item pictured below contains the August 1921 to January 1922 issues of Motion Picture Magazine, if you are only using a single article from the September 1921 issue, cite that articles author and date directly. 

screenshot of Internet archive highlighting that multiple issues may be combined into one scanned file.