Finding Audio & Video Materials

General Instructions | Audio Materials | Visual materials | Sampling of Visual Materials

General Instructions

Use the Library Catalog and search by subject or title, then limit the search by material type, such as "videos, films, slides" or "maps" or "music recording" or "spoken recording." The Location Box will indicate whether materials are located in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library Reserve Department, in Special Collections, or in another part of the collections.

Audio Materials

Music Recordings

Music recordings are best found by searching the Library Catalog using the musician or composer as the author, last name first, or by searching the title of the recording. For example, search for "Holiday, Billie," "Davis, Miles," or "Ellington, Duke" as author. The music recordings are indicated by the words [sound recording]. To get names of African American musicians and composers, you may consult music reference sources listed in the Reference Materials section of this guide or the online African American Biographical Database.

Another way to find African American music is to do a subject or keyword search and limit the results to "music recording." For example you can do a library catalog search on subject "African Americans - Music" , click on the <Limit/Sort> button, then limit to material type "music recording" and get a nice (but not comprehensive) list of African American music that includes compact discs (CDs) and vinyl records (LPs).

Visual materials

To find visual material on African Americans, you can first search for the subject, for example "African Americans." From the Results screen, click on the <Limit/Sort> button. From the Limit screen, choose VIDEOS, FILMS, SLIDES under material type, then click on "Limit/sort items retrieved using above data." You should get a list of visual materials.

You can also search for visual materials by the title of the work.

Please note that most videos are located at in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library Reserve Department.

Click here for a A SAMPLING OF VISUAL MATERIALS ON AFRICAN AMERICANS