Film and Media Studies

Guide to searching for information 

This guide will help you start looking for research for assignments, literature reviews and research.

This online tutorial uses a series of videos and activities to demonstrate some top tips for enhancing your searching skills. The extract below looks at how you decide what terms to use.

• Try the full tutorial. 

If you're using one of our databases to find journal articles, you might not be able to read the article within the database itself. If you see the Findit@UCL icon, click on it to link to the full-text

Sometimes you will see a link to the publisher's site. Unless the article is open access, you might find that you can't reach the full-text.

Clicking on the Findit@UCL link instead will link you to the full-text via UCL's subscription access, if available.

If you're using Google Scholar you can set up the Library Links feature so that it will display a findit@UCL link to help show you which articles are available via UCL subscriptions. 

UCL has an amazing collection of e-resources, but no library can have full-text access to everything. If you identify a piece of information that would be beneficial to your research, the library will try and source a copy for you via the Inter Library Loans service.You can make a request by logging into UCL Explore and then clicking on the three dots 'show more' menu to access the Inter Library Loan Request form. 

Email your librarian to get advice on carrying out a literature search, or to book a one-to-one appointment.