H.W. Wilson Cinema Image Gallery
Article Type: Eye on the net: new and notable From: Reference Reviews, Volume 24, Issue 4
In the multitude of subjects that inhabit the database universe, art often gets short shrift. With its Art Suite, H.W. Wilson is attempting to fill in that gap. The suite is a combination of five different databases: Art Full Text; Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984; Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals; Art Museum Image Gallery and now the latest release– the Cinema Image Gallery.
The Cinema Image Gallery is a unique resource, containing not only stills from film and television (over 150,000 of them), but also content such as movie posters; behind the scenes photos; biographies of actors, directors, and other movie personalities; and articles and reviews of film and TV offerings. The images date all the way back to the 1800s and forward to current film and television offerings (e.g. High School Musical 2. Really).
The database can be searched by film title, name of the personality pictured,director, and more. There is also a separate category for Academy Award winners and nominees, as well as other awards, such as the Cannes Film Festival or Golden Globes. When searching, one can use these as limiters, or results can also be narrowed by genre, film year, of photo type (e.g. lobby cards). Once a search has been executed, the display brings up thumbnails of the images, which can be checked to be saved to a folder, allowing for organization of content from multiple searches. The images themselves are high quality JPEGs. If there is a record associated with the film or TV show from which the image came, this is indicated by a link. In this way, users can easily find all images, reviews,etc. associated with a particular film. There is some unaccountable duplication in the database – a search for Elizabeth: The Golden Age brought up a variety of images, but some were the same stills. Results can be separated via tabs at the top into full-text, full-text PDF, peer-reviewed, and non peer-reviewed. With hyperlinked navigation to the left of the search results,they can be further narrowed by subject, date of creation, genre, or director. In addition, there’s a keyword Find box one can use to search within results, and links out to the Internet Movie Database.
As with much of the content in Wilson databases, another interesting feature is a built-in translator tool. If an article is available in HTML, Wilson provides translation into about eight different languages.
The main caveat with regard to this database is the source of the images– many of them come from The Kobal Collection, and if one wishes to use the content for, say, illustrations in a book or article, one must pay a fee to this image vendor for the rights to do so.
Bethany LathamInternet Editor, Reference Reviews, Assistant Professor and Electronic Resources/Documents Librarian, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA
