About Trade & Industry Literature
Trade magazines and other industry literature are key primary sources for the study of film, television, and media history.
These sources are good places to start for many research topics including finding film reviews, ratings and box office data, advertisements, and information about media production and distribution.
Trade magazines are written by industry representatives, and it's not uncommon that an author is not named. Articles are written to share industry information including trends, products, and techniques. Articles in these publications are written for people within the industry using technical language or jargon. References are provided via contextual referrals to other works, and the publications are reviewed by one or more editors employed by the publication.
Popular magazines are written by journalists, or a writer whose specialty is writing, not necessarily in the field that they are reporting. Articles are aimed at a general audience and written without using technical terms, or will define technical terms if used. The articles are reviewed by editors employed by the magazine, and referrals to other works rely on contextual information in the text.
"Key California Station Fills Gap." Broadcasting Telecasting (1953) https://archive.org/stream/broadcastingtele44unse#page/n1365/mode/2up
Selected Databases
- Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowIncludes primary sources for the study of history, film, and entertainment industries from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. Sources include trade and fan magazines, many of which have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews. Narrow your search by "Publication Date" to find relevant materials.
- Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowIncludes more than 210 scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals including many in full text. The Database covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry-including the broadcast arts. You can begin by filtering by "Source Type" to limit your search to Trade Journals and Magazines or by "Publication Subject" to limit your search to a particular area of study.
BBC Genome Project - BBC listings information printed in Radio Times (1923-2009) that is searchable by program, people, and dates
Media History Digital Library
The Media History Digital Library is non-profit initiative dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound. The free online resource includes early 20th century trade literature -- journals, magazines, press books -- from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.
Use the MHDL's Lantern to search materials and limit by publication date, title, collection, format, or language.
Use ARCLIGHT, a text visualization tool which searches the digital library, graphs the results, and provides page-level access to items revealed in the textual visualization.