FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals

FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database includes three types of documents:

• Article Citations - International Index to Film Periodicals Database contains Bibliographic citations and Abstracts from over 340 periodicals, includes Full text for more than 70 of them.
• Books Chapters - from the 5 key reference volumes.
• Film Records - from The Treasures from the Film Archives dataset.

More information on these different sources can be found in the Content page.

The list of Search Fields in the Searchable Fields page will explain to which of these Record Types each field applies.

See examples on how to search the different types of documents in the Sample Searches document.

The FIAF Thesaurus with more than 20,000 subject terms is used to classify the International Index to Film Periodicals. Subject terms are found in the subject field and this field is part of the searchable fields table to the right. Subject terms are also commonly known as descriptors, controlled vocabulary, and sometimes classification terms. Whenever they are also arranged hierarchically, they constitute a Thesaurus.

The thesaurus allows you to find subject terms to narrow or broaden your search and is available from the Advanced and Command Line Search. If you want to run a search on a subject, but you do not know what term to use, use the thesaurus to search the controlled vocabulary. A hierarchical display is available and will give suggestions on the appropriate subject terms to add to your search.

To use the thesaurus, select the Thesaurus link from the Advanced or Command Line Search, then browse or search for subjects containing the word or beginning with the word. Mark the items that you would like to search and then select the appropriate Boolean operator to combine your items. Click the Add to search button and your terms will be placed into the search form. From there, run your search to include the subject terms (adding additional search fields and terms if needed).

FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database offers nine (9) Look ups (i.e., browsable indexes), so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or publication subject. You can find the Look up links in the Advanced Search page and they are available for the following searchable fields:

• Authors
• Cast
• Companies/organizations
• Countries
• Directors
• People
• Production titles
• Publications
• Subject headings (all)

For a description of these fields, please see the Searchable Fields table to the right. 

Note: Look ups are also available from the Command Line search page (through the Look up terms link located on the right side of the page).

To use and locate a Look up, select the field from the Advanced Search drop-down menu. If a Look up is available, under the search row you will see a link to the Look up (e.g., Look up Authors).  Look ups for Directors, People, Companies/organizations, Subject headings (all), are listed in the More search options section of the Advanced Search page.

Select the Look up link and then you will see a browsable and alphabetical index for that field.  There are some indexes that will not display an alphabetical list before searching for the term, rather you will have to enter a term first, and then the alphabetical list of matches will display.

Once you locate the index term that you would like to add to your search, mark the item, and then click the Add to search button. The index term will now appear in the advanced search form along with the appropriate pull-down menu selection.  You may select multiple items by checking the box next to each, then selecting either the AND or the OR Boolean operator radio button prior to clicking the Search button.