If you find a book through the catalog or SuperSearch that we only have in print, see if you can find it in the Internet Archive. You can borrow digitized copies of books for up to 14 days with a free account. Access is limited to one user at a time per book, so be sure to return the book as soon as you're done, to make it available for others, or use the 1-hour borrowing option. If you want to search for keywords in the full content of all of the Internet Archive's digitized books, change "Metadata" to "Text Contents."
This guide provides some useful starting places and strategies for doing research and creating video essays for this course. We're happy to help!
Because SuperSearch contains so much content from so many different kinds of sources, the results can sometimes be overwhelming and hard to focus. At the same time, SuperSearch is also not comprehensive and can miss key sources. To search with more focus, precision, and depth, be sure to try the databases recommended on this guide, as well as the library catalog for books and films.
The A to Z of African American Cinema by 
A Dictionary of Film Studies by 
The Routledge Companion to Film History by 
Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia by Although SuperSearch can be a great starting place, it can be challenging to find the most relevant material in a flood of results. More specialized databases, like the ones below, can provide a "less is more" experience, by helping to focus your search on articles and books in your area of interest, with an emphasis on scholarly sources. Some individual databases will also turn up results that SuperSearch misses. It always helps to search a few databases for the best coverage. Even when there's considerable overlap in content, the different search capabilities and features of each database can help you find different sources.
Cinema & Media Studies Databases
History & Multidisciplinary Databases
Full text of more than 170 wide-ranging publications by and about African Americans, including academic journals, magazines, newsletters, reports, and other genres.
Dates: 1825-1997 CE
The film databases FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals and Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text also both have film reviews from film magazines in addition to scholarly criticism. Use the filtering options to choose the document type review or film review.
Start with a keyword search. Once you find a book that's relevant to your topic, click on the title and look for the Subjects listed for that book to help you find "more like this" and explore related aspects of a broader topic.
Example: Keyword search: hollywood AND "african americans"
Subject terms for the books that come up in this keyword search lead you to many more books on aspects of the topic, for example:
African Americans in Motion Pictures
African Americans in the motion picture industry
Motion pictures -- Social aspects -- United States
For historical newspapers, see under Find Film Reviews and News above.