Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

Good news on the database front, Penn Libraries has just signed on to the Entertainment IndustryMagazine Archive. It sits in the Proquest suite of databases that you are already familiar with if you search key social science databases (Sociological Abstracts, IBSS, etc.), Digital Dissertations, or any of the historical newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. so it will be easy to get find as well as combine with broader searching.

EIMA covers core US and UK trade magazines in film, music, broadcasting and theater. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews. I guess the biggest omission in this collection is Rolling Stone. That being said:

This database includes several trade magazines which have effectively provided the main historical record for their subject areas throughout the 20th century, such as Variety (1905-2000), Billboard (1894-2000), Broadcasting (1931-2000) and The Stage (1880-2000). Although these titles focus primarily on film, music, TV/radio and theatre respectively, they have between them covered the full range of popular entertainments throughout their history, from music halls, circuses and fairs to jukeboxes, gambling machines and computer games.

For students of popular music, the UK music press titles New Musical Express (1946-2000) and Melody Maker (1926-2000) are equally invaluable sources: from their origins as trade papers for working musicians, they grew into mass-circulation weeklies in the 1960s, and pioneered serious rock journalism in the late 1960s and 70s. A selection of more specialist magazines give in-depth coverage of musical genres and eras, such as 'British Invasion' pop (Rave, 1964-70), reggae, African and Caribbean music (The Beat, 1982-2000), or the rave scene (Mixmag, 1983-2000).

Bringing these titles together in a single database gives researchers the opportunity to find comprehensive information on specific films, plays, theaters, actors, directors, TV series, film studios, musicians, genres, record labels, subcultures and youth movements. The inclusion of consumer and fan magazines such as Picturegoer (1911-1960), American Film (1975-1992) and Musician (1976-1999) means that a single search can bring back industry news items, features on technological breakthroughs and in-depth interviews with major artists, together with photographs and illustrations, gossip columns, listings, reviews, charts and statistics. Items such as advertisements, covers and short reviews of films, music singles or other works have been treated as separate documents with accurately-captured titles in order to help researchers find all the relevant material for their search topic.  --Proquest description