Documentary Resources

Because they deal with nonfictional subject matter, documentary filmmakers sometimes make use of different materials than other filmmakers and film scholars. Below are links to resources that may be helpful in researching documentaries.

Film Production
Print and online resources for all aspects of film production, from shooting and financing to financing and distribution.

Finding Documentary Films at Penn State
Documentary films at Penn State are cataloged just like feature films, and are searchable by title, author(s), and subject. Among many other films, Penn State owns many films in the PBS documentary series Frontline. (Hint: use the Library of Congress subject headings documentary films and documentary-style films to limit your CAT search to documentaries.)

Background Research

News Sources
Indexes to newspapers, magazines, and transcripts of radio and television news.

Statistics
The Social Sciences Library's social sciences Statistics pages provides links to a wide array of statistical resources. In addition to major resources like the federal census and LexisNexis Statistical, these pages provide links and guides to statistics by subject.

Film Archives and Stock Footage
While many of these resources have footage that is in the public domain, be sure to check if there are copyright restrictions, and if your use of clips qualifies as fair use.

Looking for Good Art?

• Part 1 : Web Resources and Image Databases
• Part 2 : Image Retrieval
• Part 3: Glorious National Collections

Penn State University Subject Libraries
Subject libraries provide guides to library resources in various disciplines, and subject specialist librarians who will be happy to help you with further research.

Page originally created by Brian Bialkowski under the direction of Debora Cheney, Foster Communications Librarian