Introduction
This subject guide highlights some key discipline resources to get you started with study and research.
- Refer to the New Students Library Guide for everything you need to know about Library services and resources.
- Build your researching, reading and writing skills with the Research Essentials Library Guide.
- Streamline your access to online resources with the Library's quick access tools.
Reference works
Encyclopedias:
- Oxford ReferenceOxford Reference is the home of Oxford’s quality reference publishing. The collection provides quality, up-to-date reference content at the click of a button. The University of Melbourne subscribes to selected titles from this large collection of materials.
- SAGE KnowledgeSAGE Knowledge offers an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content, including scholarly monographs, reference works, handbooks, series, professional development titles, and more. The Library has purchased selected titles only.
Directories:
- ArtsHub AustraliaArtsHub is Australia’s leading online resource for reviews, news and all the latest jobs from the Australian creative and arts industries.
- ScreenHub (ArtsHub Australia)ScreenHub is Australia's leading portal for professionals working within and those aspiring to enter Film & Television, where a community read, write and share their knowledge and passion for the industry.
Databases and journals
Use databases to search across many academic resources (including peer-reviewed journals) at the same time.
Refer to the A-Z Ejournals and Databases page for a comprehensive list of available resources.
Core Arts and Humanities databases (try these first):
The selection of multidisciplinary databases below will retrieve results from different subject areas.
- Discovery (EBSCO)Use Discovery to look for books, ebooks, journal articles and more. It's a great place to start your search but does not give you everything the Library has. We highly recommend searching in at least one other database on this list as well as Discovery.
- Google ScholarGoogle Scholar is one of the most popular ways to find academic sources for study and research. Did you know you can use it to search for journal articles that the University of Melbourne has access to? You can do this through the link above or set up your Google Scholar preferences to include Library content.
- JSTORJSTOR is one of the largest databases the Library has access to. It is a multidisciplinary database so it looks in thousands of journals in over a hundred subjects - many of them related to arts and humanities. Highly recommended as your first or second place to search.
- Scopus (Elsevier)Scopus is another large, multidisciplinary database. It looks through journals, books, and conference papers. It has some advanced tools that can help you discover new research quickly - the 'times cited' and 'related articles' links are great time-savers. While it doesn't always have full-text PDFs it is still an excellent place to look for your research.
- Web of ScienceWeb of Science is a massive, multidisciplinary database which includes a large amount of humanities and social sciences material from as far back as 1900. Like Scopus it has some advanced features that allows you to quickly link to related research.
- ProQuest CentralCovering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. This award-winning online reference resource features a highly-respected, diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
Databases relevant to Screen and Cultural Studies
For more focused results, try searching in one of these subject-specific databases.
- Project Muse Journal CollectionProject MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 500+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more. Updated continually.
- Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest)This database abstracts and indexes the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers and working papers. Cited references are included for many journal articles.
- Film & Television Literature Index (EBSCO)A bibliographic database that provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 380 publications (and selected coverage of 300). The earliest journal to be indexed dates from 1914.
- Film Index International (ProQuest)Produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute. Covers all areas of film studies from over 170 countries - from the very first silent movies, to art house classics or the latest blockbusters.
- Performing Arts Database (Proquest)This database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 260 international periodicals, plus full text for more than 100 of the indexed journals. IIPA covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television and more.
- APA-FT - Australian Public Affairs - Full Text (Informit)APA-FT provides full text coverage of selected scholarly articles on current affairs, economics, humanities, law, literature, politics and social sciences and is produced by the National Library of Australia.
- Literature Online (LION) (ProQuest)Contains more than 350,000 works of poetry, drama and prose, over 350 full-text literature journals, and key bibliographies, biographies, reference works and student guides. Literature Online also includes the bibliographic database ABELL, with records covering monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations published anywhere in the world.
- MLA International Bibliography (EBSCOhost)The MLA International Bibliography is the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore and film. It includes citations to content published in journals, books, series, translations, scholarly editions, websites and dissertations. Also includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the MLA Thesaurus.
- Berg Fashion LibraryThe Berg Fashion Library provides access to integrated text and image content on world dress and fashion throughout history. It covers all regions of the world, with in-depth content from pre-history to the present day contributed by internationally-renowned scholars. The database Includes includes a vast image bank of clothing from all periods of history across the globe, an interactive timeline, an exhibition archive, over 90 ebooks as well as The Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, The Berg Companion to Fashion, and The Dictionary of Fashion History.
Archives
- Melbourne International Film Festival Archive (MIFF)The MIFF online archive contains all 63 past editions of the festival (1952–2013) for you to browse or search through.
Search options currently include: ‘Festival Year’, ‘Film Title’, ‘Director’ and ‘Country’.
- Victorian Popular CultureAn essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inviting users into the venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic and spiritualist séances. The Library has access to Section I. Spiritualism, sensation and magic ; Section II. Circuses, sideshows and freaks ; Section III. Music hall, theatre and entertainment ; Section IV. Moving pictures, optical entertainments and the advent of cinema.
- MPPDA Digital Archive Documents from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, IncThe MPPDA Digital Archives consists of a database of the extant records of the General Correspondence files of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., covering the period from 1922 to 1939.
- American Film Scripts Online (Alexander Street Press)
American Film Scripts Online contains 1,009 scripts by 1,062 writers together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimilie images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Most of the scripts have never been published before, and nowhere else are they available online.
Books
To find books on a particular subject, do a keyword search in the Library Catalogue. Alternatively you can search by title, author, etc.
You can also find books on similar topics through the subject headings in item records. Click on these headings to find related subjects and titles.
Looking for a book we don't have or is not on our shelves?
Inter-Library Loans
University of Melbourne staff and students can request resources through the Library’s Inter-Library Loans service. For more information visit the ILL web page, or you can access the request forms.
A CAVAL card allows you to borrow from other universities and TAFEs. Visit the CAVAL website to find out how to sign up for a CAVAL card.
You can then use the Trove website to see which library has the book you want.
Video streaming databases & DVDs
Finding films:
To search for individual film titles, look up the film in the Library catalogue using the "Online Video" option.
If it is a film with a common title, try a Keyword search using the title and director.
e.g. Keyword: fly AND Cronenberg
To see which films the library holds by a particular director, look up the director's name as an author.
You can also access database collections of videos. The following links will take you to each video streaming database:
- Kanopy (Kanopy)Over 20,000 videos from the world’s most prominent filmmakers and production houses, covering a wide range of educational disciplines including literacy, mathematics, history and issues in society. Includes a large range of Australian content. Individual videos can be searched in library catalogue.
- EduTV (Informit)EduTV is a Video Streaming service of over 50,000+ broadcast programs from free-to-air and pay TV channels in Australia. Coverage commences with 2006 and includes content across a wide range of learning areas. Free to air content is recorded from the ABC, SBS, NITV, 9, 7, 10, etc. channels. EduTV also includes several programs broadcast on Pay TV such as The History Channel, National Geographic, BBC Knowledge and Discovery channels.
- Internet Archive : Moving Image Archive
This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts.
- Open Culture - Free Movies Online
Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community.
- UbuWeb
Large educational resource of avant-garde material in the fields of visual, concrete and sound poetry. It also includes film and sound archives.
- Socialism on Film : The Cold War and International PropagandaSourced from the British Film Institute (BFI), Socialism on Film documents the communist world, from the Russian Revolution to the end of the Cold War. This unique collection of documentary films, features and newsreels reveals all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, as seen by filmmakers from the USSR, Vietnam, Cuba, China, East Germany, Eastern Europe and more. The footage was originally sourced from communist states, then versioned into English language for private distribution in Britain and the West. The films have been conserved, digitised from the original 16mm and 35mm reels, and are fully transcribed and searchable.
- Alexander Street VideoAlexander Street Press offers video, audio and text-based resources covering an extensive range of subjects. This site allows users to cross-search the content purchased by the University of Melbourne Library. It features a single, fully integrated platform, offering access to thousands of full-length streaming video titles and audio recordings. Almost every video in the collection is fully transcribed in addition to being indexed for subjects, people, places, release date, language, publisher, and video type. Users can also select to view a single subject collection by using the dropdown menu at the top of the homepage.
Archive & museum film collections:
- Australian National Film & Sound Archive
The nation’s living archive – collecting, preserving and sharing our rich audiovisual heritage. Includes an indigenous collection.
- ACMI Australian Centre for the Moving Image - Collections & preservation
DVDs in the University of Melbourne Library:
The easiest way to find DVDs/Videos in the Library Catalogue is to do a keyword search using the "DVD Collections" option. You can also search using title, author or subject.
Film reviews
- Film Index International (ProQuest)Produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute. Covers all areas of film studies from over 170 countries - from the very first silent movies, to art house classics or the latest blockbusters.
- CinephiliaA Melbourne based film review site for independent productions, reviews of latest releases and includes a searchable archive. provides links to other australian and international film review sites and filmmaking resources.
- Dark HorizonsNews, images, clips and reviews of current and upcoming blockbuster films.
- Rotten TomatoesAn aggregator of mainly US film reviews.
- FactivaFactiva is a full text newspaper database which include thousands of news publications from all over the world. It is an excellent source of film reviews from major newspapers.
Consult our guide to finding news for additional sources of contemporary and historic film reviews:
Theses
Websites
You can find relevant information and resources for your research on the websites of professional organisations and bodies, institutes, NGOs, government departments, etc.
This guide gives a few suggestions to get you started and to give you an idea what to look for. It is by no means comprehensive. If you are a coursework student, check your LMS to see if your lecturer has provided website recommendations.
Tip: if you want to limit your Google search results to organisational, governmental, or educational websites, use Google's advanced search option to limit the site or domains to .org, .gov, .edu.
Referencing and citing
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