Skip to Main Content

Film Studies: Beyond Oxford: other libraries & online resources

A short guide to Bodleian Libraries' resources for Film Studies
Subjects: English, Film Studies

Other libraries

The British Film Institute has a wealth of film-related information on its website, as well as the BFI Reuben Library, which includes books, periodicals and special collections on British and international film.

The British Library's vast collections also include books and journals on film.

If you're looking for a book that is not held within the Bodleian Libraries, try a combined library catalogue such as Library Hub, which combines the catalogues of the UK's major research libraries, or WorldCat, combining the catalogues of many libraries worldwide. Books from other libraries can often be borrowed via inter-library loan, or you can request the Libraries to purchase items that we don't have.

Other relevant libraries further afield include:

the Austrian Film Museum Library;
la Bibliothèque du film;
the library at the Deutsche Kinemathek.

Film Studies resources on the internet

There are numerous professional and scholarly websites for Film Studies. If you are using the internet as an academic research tool, it is vital to develop good searching techniques and to be able to evaluate webpages effectively in terms of authorship, accuracy and quality of information, and currency.

The British Universities Film and Video Council's has a useful Moving Image Gateway, which links to over 1,000 websites relating to moving image and sound.

There are a number of websites which provide listings of films and production information:

American Film Institute Catalog of American Feature Films;
British Films Directory (the British Council's directory of films made since 1998);
Internet Movie Database.

Other film sites which may be of interest include:

Senses of Cinema: an online journal with a 'Great Directors' section in its archive;
filmarchives online: a gateway to film archives from all over Europe, focusing on non-fiction film.
EFG: European Film Gateway: access to to films, images and texts from selected collections of 37 film archives across Europe

and websites on the cinemas of specific countries:

Britain on Film: the BFI's platform for 1000s of titles from film & TV archives in the UK, about life in Britain (part of the wider BFIPlayer online resource)
Screenonline: a guide to Britain's film and television history, published by the BFI;
Instituto Cervantes Library blog on Spanish and Latin American film;
PLAT: access to over 150 Spanish films online;
University of Chile's Cineteca Virtual:150 Chilean films online.