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Communication

Welcome to the Communication Department Guide!

The purpose of this Research Guide is to provide you with the specific information and tools that you'll be using to do research. On this page, you will find our librarians' recommendations for best resources for your subject. This includes relevant resources, such as subject specific databases, citation format guidance, search tips, and contact information of the subject librarian

Need additional assistance? Reach out to your subject librarian! We are always happy to help.

Best Bets: Databases

Unsure of which Databases to search for Communication sources? Here is where we recommend starting:

Communication & Mass Media Complete  

Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) is a robust communication studies database. It provides full-text, indexing and abstracts for many top communication journals covering all related disciplines, including media studies, linguistics, rhetoric and discourse.

SAGE Journals and Backfile  

Find over 600 peer-reviewed journals with deep back-file coverage in 20 disciplines. Browsing journals by discipline includes the following subjects: Health Sciences, Life & Biomedical Sciences, Materials Sciences & Engineering, Social Sciences & Humanities, etc.

Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints 

Supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts; presents all sides of important issues, and empowers learners to develop information literacy and critical thinking skills. 

Additional Resources

Media History Digital Library

A free online resource, featuring millions of pages of books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.

American Memory

Library of Congress digital library of primary source and archival material relating to American culture and history: print, manuscripts, photographs, moving pictures and recorded sound. More than 150 collections and growing.

British Pathe

Pathé News was a producer of newsreels, cinemagazines, and documentaries from 1910 until 1976 in the United Kingdom. The Pathé News archive is known today as "British Pathé". Its collection of news film and movies includes 3,500 hours of filmed history!

Cinemocracy

Films commissioned by the U.S. Government to support the war effort during World War II: by John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, and Frank Capra's 8-part series Why We Fight. Downloadable MPG files.

Deep Dish TV: Video Archive

Began in the late 1980s as a network, linking independent producers, programmers, community-based activists and viewers who support movements for social change and economic justice. Nearly 200 older documentaries available from the Internet Archive.

Internet Archive: Moving Image

Movies from the Prelinger Archive showing American everyday life, culture, industry, and institutions in the 20thC. Downloadable MPEG-2

Living Room Candidate

See video of presidential campaign commercials from 1952 to 2008. More than 300 digitized commercials are presented, along with analysis, historical background, and results from each election.

PBS Video

Browse archives for episodes by PBS program or by topics such as culture and science. American Experience, Frontline, Nova, Great Performances, Masterpiece, Julia Child, and more.

Public Domain Image

It's a digital vault of 80,000 video clips, photos, sound recordings, and 3-D models, all embeddable and freely available to anyone who wants to reuse copyright-free media. They're impeccably organized, labeled, and tagged, so you can find just the type of clip or image you're looking for.

American Archive Of Public Broadcasting

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress, WGBH Boston and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides the public with access to a collection of American public radio and television audio and visual materials dating back to the 1950s. The records will provide information about which public media video and audio materials have been digitized and preserved in the AAPB, indicate which video and audio files are available for research on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and highlight the participating stations. Contributing stations’ histories, information about significant productions and resources for participating organizations will be

American Rhetoric 

Videos of major American political speeches, sermons, debates, and more. Includes audio and transcripts

Interlibrary Loan

Do you need access to something we don't have in our library collection? Try Interlibrary loan - the service that allows us to borrow materials from other libraries. Learn more here.