research – Media Services News

Dig into television and film corpuses with Bookworm Movies

One handy tool for cultural analysis is to measure how often words are used within a given set of texts, whether that’s transcripts from Congress or every document ever written. It’s much easier to search through the written word for obvious reasons, leaving audio-visual media left out of the content analysis process. Luckily, a very … Continue reading “Dig into television and film corpuses with Bookworm Movies”

One handy tool for cultural analysis is to measure how often words are used within a given set of texts, whether that’s transcripts from Congress or every document ever written. It’s much easier to search through the written word for obvious reasons, leaving audio-visual media left out of the content analysis process. Luckily, a very clever professor named Ben Schmidt has leveraged big data to make movies and television shows as searchable as books.

Schmidt’s new service, Bookwork Movies, uses the Open Subtitles database to grab the scripts from thousands of movies and shows. Punch in any word or phrase – and, optionally, a specific show or medium – and Bookworm Movies will produce a detailed graph of how often each word is used relative to its entire corpus. As show in the chart above, Scrubs uses the word “doctor” more frequently than many medical dramas, while it appears comparatively little in Grey’s Anatomy. There’s all sorts of angles you could go above analyzing that. This is a terrific starting point for seeing how television shows and movies change language over time in comparison to one another.

The best part? The entirety of The Simpsons is included as well. And thankfully, they haven’t used the word “selfie” yet.

Meet the Poster Printer

The library has a fun new addition: meet the poster printer! This dashboard-sized behemoth prints large-form posters for presentations and events. No longer will you have to awkwardly print out paragraphs and glue to them to CVS posterboard; you can design the whole poster with software available at the New Media Center. Price varies by … Continue reading “Meet the Poster Printer”

As finals season is revving up, keep this in mind if you need to make a poster for a research presentation. This will be especially useful next semester for students in a research symposium or working on an Honors capstone.

Silent Film Online is free, substantial

Ends up that the lost Hitchcock isn’t the only silent film you can find online now. The American University Library now has a subscription to Silent Film Online, a database of streaming silent films. This isn’t a tiny collection: it has heavy hitters like Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin, and Metropolis. If you’re an active member of … Continue reading “Silent Film Online is free, substantial”

Ends up that the lost Hitchcock isn’t the only silent film you can find online now. The American University Library now has a subscription to Silent Film Online, a database of streaming silent films. This isn’t a tiny collection: it has heavy hitters like Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin, and Metropolis.

If you’re an active member of the AU community (student, staff, faculty, etc.), you are able to view these films at any time. That’s over 150 hours of historically important silent films available at any time. This is an incredible resource!

The Academy goes digital, opens archives for all

Digital collections are really exciting. Fragile resources that could previously only be handled in person are now available for anyone to view online. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the governing body in charge of the Oscars, is the latest to jump on this trend. They’ve uploaded their massive archives of film publications … Continue reading “The Academy goes digital, opens archives for all”

Digital collections are really exciting. Fragile resources that could previously only be handled in person are now available for anyone to view online. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the governing body in charge of the Oscars, is the latest to jump on this trend. They’ve uploaded their massive archives of film publications for the public to browse. This is an enormous and invaluable repository of memorabilia, periodicals, and personal items at anyone in the world can now see.

The collection mostly covers the early years of film, with some emphasis on the silent era. Perhaps the most interesting items are the Alfred Hitchcock Papers, including candid on-set photos and production items from some of his biggest films, and an assortment of sheet music used for silent films.

As with so many research tools, the Academy’s archive is educational and fun to browse.

Archive.org makes three years of news searchable

The wizards of Archive.org have created another excellent streaming video tool. Just in time for all the election retrospectives and analysis to begin, the Internet Archive presents TV News Search & Borrow, a site that allows you to search through three years of major news programs and share clips with others. This is a great … Continue reading “Archive.org makes three years of news searchable”

The wizards of Archive.org have created another excellent streaming video tool. Just in time for all the election retrospectives and analysis to begin, the Internet Archive presents TV News Search & Borrow, a site that allows you to search through three years of major news programs and share clips with others. This is a great collaborative tool for quickly finding soundbites from the news for academic research… or just fun.

For instance, here’s a bit from CNN Newsroom about Romney’s famously silly “binders full of women” remark. Finding and creating the clip was as easy as setting a date range, searching for “binders full of women,” locating a good segment, and clicking the “Share” button. You can narrow your search further by network or program. For example, here’s a search for every time Comedy Central mentioned Paul Ryan.

Compared to similar transcript services offered by LexisNexis, this is incredible! Not only is it free and open for anyone to use, but you also get access to the raw video and can easily send it to others or embed it in your presentations.

CTRL Open House, Hurst Hall 2nd Floor – Thursday, November 10 from 1:30pm – 4:00pm

Thursday, November 10 – 1:30pm – 4:00pmHurst Hall 2nd Floor The Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning invites you to an Open House to celebrate the new year, their new initiatives, and that they’re finally able to be together in one place. There will be food, demonstrations of many of their resources, a chance to … Continue reading “CTRL Open House, Hurst Hall 2nd Floor – Thursday, November 10 from 1:30pm – 4:00pm”

Thursday, November 10 – 1:30pm – 4:00pm
Hurst Hall 2^nd Floor

The Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning invites you to an Open House to celebrate the new year, their new initiatives, and that they’re finally able to be together in one place.

There will be food, demonstrations of many of their resources, a chance to meet the CTRL staff, and opportunities for audience participation.

AU Library Has Unveiled a New Unified Search – SearchBox!

Have you ever wanted to search the library’s web resources all at once? Find both books and articles with just one search engine? Your dream is very near reality because AU Library has added SearchBox. With SearchBox, library researchers can search simultaneously the ALADIN Catalog and approximately ninety percent (yes, 90%!) of the library’s electronic … Continue reading “AU Library Has Unveiled a New Unified Search – SearchBox!”

Have you ever wanted to search the library’s web resources all at once? Find both books and articles with just one search engine? Your dream is very near reality because AU Library has added SearchBox. With SearchBox, library researchers can search simultaneously the ALADIN Catalog and approximately ninety percent (yes, 90%!) of the library’s electronic resources, including journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in databases. “SearchBox is the most revolutionary and amazing new development since the library went online two decades ago,” says one longtime AU librarian.

For students and faculty, research will be much faster and easier because they can conduct Google-style searches of the library’s vast array of electronic resources. These resources are not available through a regular public Google search because the resources are privately paid for by the library through subscription fees. SearchBox also covers the consortium-wide holdings of the ALADIN Catalog and the digital repository, American University Research Commons. The only resources that the SearchBox engine cannot currently search are some statistical and financial databases. Those databases can still be searched individually. In fact, all databases can still be searched individually, which is particularly important to researchers who want to execute more sophisticated or complex searches that take advantage of specific database features.

SearchBox is supported with material from 6,800 publishers, 94,000 journal titles, and 550 million indexed items—numbers that increase daily. It has many powerful features that will help researchers. For instance, researchers can limit search results to full text or to peer-reviewed/scholarly journals or both. The default for displaying search results is relevancy ranking, but the results can also be displayed in ascending or descending order by date of publication. Other limits include subject, content type, and language. Individual items can be saved and displayed in selected citation formats. Results can also be exported to citation management software such as EndNote. Unlike the ALADIN Catalog or most current databases, SearchBox can also correct for spelling. For instance, if a researcher mistakenly types “Humon rights,” SearchBox will query, “Did you mean human rights?”

Using SearchBox is easy and highly intuitive, but as always, researchers may wish to contact a reference librarian if questions arise.