The Business of Film (Film S-208)
Charles Lyons

History, Biography & Scholarship: Books

Books are one of the best sources for in-depth historical and critical analysis, and for biographies and autobiographies. One of the standard shortcuts to searching for books in Orbis is the Keyword search. However, this is not always the best approach -- it will miss books that are on the subject, but happen not to have the search terms in the catalog record. For example, if you searched for "film and business," you would not locate Anatomy of the movies, edited by David Pirie, which is principally about the film business.

This is where subject headings become tremendously useful. Subject headings gather all the works on a topic under one consistent term. In this case, the standard term for the film business is Motion picture industry. (Likewise, the standard term for movies is Motion pictures.)

There are many subject headings for aspects of the film industry. Here are some of them:

Motion picture industry Motion picture industry--France [any country] Motion picture industry--California [U.S. state] Motion picture industry--Economic aspects Motion picture industry--History Motion picture industry--Law and legislation Motion picture industry--Political aspects Motion picture industry--Social aspects Motion picture industry--Statistics Motion picture studios

Motion picture producers and directors Independent filmmakers Women motion picture producers and directors African American motion picture producers and directors Mexican Americans in the motion picture industry Women in the motion picture industry Motion picture audience Motion pictures--Marketing--Handbooks, manuals, etc. Motion pictures--Production and direction Low budget motion pictures

If you need a book about a specific person, such as a producer, search for that person's name as Subject (for example, "Selznick, David O.").

You can also find books about a specific studio, such as Warner Bros. or Walt Disney Company. Search for these as Subject as well.

For further information, resources, and a more extensive list of subject headings, see the Movie Industry and Personnel page in the main Film Studies Research Guide.

But I still want to use Keyword searches!

There are definitely useful Keyword searches you can do in Orbis. For example, try any combination of the phrase "Motion picture" (or even "Motion pictures") with "business," "marketing," or "finance."

Also, it isn't always possible to predict what subject heading might exist for your topic. For example, if you only knew about the heading Motion picture industry--Statistics, you would miss the heading Motion picture industry--United States--Statistics. So it's often a good idea to do Keyword searches that include standard subject terms; in this example, "motion pictures" and statistics will pick up both of these headings (note the quotation marks: they're necessary for Keyword searches that use phrases). Of course, it will also pick up anything like Motion picture industry--Europe--Statistics. So these searches are broader, and therefore catch titles you might otherwise miss, but they may also retrieve a lot of irrelevant titles.