Choosing your Search Terms

Enter search terms on separate lines e.g., enter title of film on the top line, director's last name below, so as to articulate your search request. 

• Quotations marks (search for specific phrases or names)

  • "Comedy Films", "John Waters", "Female Trouble"

• Asterisk / Wildcard * (search for root word with different endings)

  • Comed* = Comedy, Comedies, Comedian, Comedian's, Comedians, Comedic

Combine your Search Terms

Pair up search terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to instruct databases to pull different combinations to narrow or widen the search results: 

• AND (narrows your search)

  • laughter AND "motion pictures"

  • Paramount AND distribution

• OR (widens your search)

  • film OR movies OR cinema

  • comedy OR "comedy films" OR slapstick

  • MGM OR "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer"

ProQuest  

ProQuest is a platform containing over 100 databases. ProQuest contains publications (i.e., newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, eBook titles, dissertation and theses) in different subjects areas including film. Remember you might find content in a non-film related resource from your time period, (i.e., newspapers, business or tech magazines).

1) Use the Advanced Search Tool  

2) Sort your Results 

• Sort your results (Relevance, Date) 
  • Sort by Date: It may be useful to arrange the results chronologically (oldest first) in order to follow the entire production process of a particular film, from gossip about potential stars to reviews and box-office grosses.

3) Using ProQuest Search Filters

• Narrow your search results using filters on left sidebar:
  • Source Type (e.g., Scholarly Journals, Newspapers, Magazines, Trade Magazines)
  • Publication Title (e.g., Cinema Journal, New York Times, Variety)
  • Document Type (e.g., Reviews - film or books, Feature, Front Page/Cover Story, Article, Literature Review, Interviews, Editorial, or try excluding advertisements)

4) Mark relevant records

If you find interesting articles, be sure to . 

• Go to the results page and click the check box to the left of the article title  
• When you are ready to email the articles to yourself, scroll to the top of the results list and click on Email link (on right side)
• Email the marked records to yourself 

Another option is to create a free ProQuest MyResearch account.

a) Google Scholar 

•  Set up Google Scholar to recognize that you are a UofT Student: https://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/linkit/google-scholar

b) Other Popular Databases

The platforms hold collections of eBooks and scholarly journals (in some cases magazines, trade/industry journals and other materials are available). 

• EBSCO

• JSTOR

• Project Muse 

c) Databases by Subject A-Z