Film Studies: Home

If you’re a student at Connecticut College taking a course in the Department of Film Studies, and you have a research assignment, then this guide is for you. It may also be useful to you if your project involves film in any way—either critical/theoretical study or practical application.

Probably the best reason to consider taking this guide’s advice is that it is likely to save you time. But it’s also likely to improve the quality of your research or the practical work you are doing. This guide tries to organize the most useful film-related resources so that you can access them efficiently. It also offers help with how to think about them and use them. 

To learn more about a specific topic, simply click on one of the various tabs that you see above (or click on the links below). The tabs are arranged from left to right in an order that corresponds to the ways in which researchers frequently access and use information resources:

• Getting a Background points you toward reference sources — print as well as online — that allow you to gain an overview of a topic, and that can help you to find relevant primary and secondary sources.
• Searching for Articles and Books links to the key databases that provide listings of articles on film — including, often, the full text of those very articles — and provides a few helpful tips for searching them.
• Finding Films gives you some information about how to find actual films and production-related resources.
• Navigating the Web displays links to some key Web sites that might be useful in doing literary research, and gives you some suggestions when you're trying to search for other sites on a specific topic. There's also some information about how to evaluate sites for their usefulness, relevance to your project, and credibility.
• Citing and Organizing helps you utilize tools, such as RefWorks, that help you keep track of the resources you've found and that help you cite them properly. 

The guide was written by Fred Folmer. I'm a librarian at Shain, and one of my responsibilities is to serve as the liaison to the students and faculty of the Department of Film Studies. I am always very happy to meet for a research consultation; please email me or call me at 860-439-2272.