Open Access (OA) refers to a series of principles and practices through which research is distributed online with no institutional/monetary barriers and with full reuse rights. Traditionally, open access has referred to materials published by peer-reviewed journals, but the term can apply to any research output including books, monographs, theses/dissertations, conference papers/proceedings, and more. The Open Access movement also encompasses open data, open educational resources, and open science. Here, we have gathered a number of open access resources, including traditional peer-reviewed content along with digital collections, reference materials, and other sources available free-of-charge.
Video: Open Access Explained! Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics) (2012).
See the following links to learn more:
This box contains a selection of Open Access Media Studies journals. For additional media studies-specific open access resources, see the websites linked below:
For additional general open access resources, see the following:
This box contains a small selection of Open Access books. If you are looking for additional selections, consult the links below:
Access to freely available e-books in the fields of humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and architecture & design. punctum focuses on authors who want to publish books that are genre-queer and genre-bending and take experimental risks with the forms and styles of intellectual writing.
Free, full text, downloadable ebooks for books out of copyright in the U.S. Project. Project Gutenberg has the goal of making information, books, and other materials available to the public in forms that are easy to read, use, quote, and search. Includes access to electronic text listings, recent releases, newsletters, articles, and other archives.
Online platform for the global new media art community supporting the creation, presentation and discussion of contemporary art that uses new technologies.
See our Selected Newspapers and Periodicals box for more open-access popular publications.
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
German-Jewish periodicals published between 1806 and 1938
This project offers the most comprehensive collection of German-Jewish periodicals on on the web. These periodicals are reflective of religious and political controversies within the German-Jewish community during the 19th and 20th centuries, and offer insight into the social and cultural history of Jews in Germany.
Outdoor Indiana is the official publication of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (formerly the Department of Conservation). The magazine debuted in February 1934. The online version includes issues from February 1934 through November-December 1993. Issues 2020 to present can be found on the Indiana Department of Natural Resources website.
For our extensive list of Image Databases and Stock Photo websites, see the Image and Audiovisual Resources tab.
Over 14,000 Kodachrome slides by amateur photographer Charles W. Cushman (1896-1972) about his travels in the United States and abroad.
Taken by amateur photographer Charles Weever Cushman between 1938 and 1969, the images document an amazing cross-section of American and international subjects, from inner-city storefronts and industrial landscapes to candid portraits and botanical studies. The collection is part of the Indiana University Archives. The richly saturated Kodachrome slides add color to an era primarily recorded in black and white, "a world that we had long since resigned ourselves to viewing only in shades of gray," writes Eric Sandweiss, IU Carmony Chair and Professor of History, in an essay included on the collection's Web site. "In Cushman's work," he observes, "the past becomes, for an instant, impossibly present."
An image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
The Digital Scriptorium (DS) is a non-commercial online image database of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, or manuscripts made in the tradition of books before printing. DS unites scattered resources from a consortium of many libraries into a union catalog for teaching and scholarly research in medieval and Renaissance studies. It provides unprecedented access to illuminated and textual manuscripts through digital cataloging records, supported by high resolution images and retrievable by various topic searches. DS enables users from the most casual to the most specialized to study the rare and valuable materials of academic, research, and public libraries. It makes available collections that are often restricted from public access and includes not only recognized masterpieces but also understudied manuscripts that have been previously overlooked for exhibition or publication. DS fosters the public viewing of non-circulating materials otherwise available only within restricted access libraries. As a visual catalog, DS allows scholars and beginners to verify with their own eyes cataloguing information about places and dates of origin, scripts, artists, and quality. Special emphasis is placed on the touchstone materials, i.e., manuscripts signed and dated by their scribes, thus beginning the American contribution to the goal established in 1953 by the Comité international de paléographie latine (International Committee of Latin Paleography): to document photographically the proportionately small number of codices of certain origin that will serve stylistically to localize and date the vast quantities of unsigned manuscripts. DS publishes not only manuscripts of firm attribution but also ones that need the attention of further scholarship and traditionally would have been unlikely candidates for reproduction. Because it is web-based, it also allows for updates and corrections, and as a matter of form individual records in DS can and do acknowledge contributions from outside scholars. DS encourages interaction between the academic and the library world to build a growing and reciprocally beneficial body of knowledge. DS looks to the needs of a very diverse community of specialists: medievalists, classicists, musicologists, paleographers, diplomatists, literary scholars and art historians. At the same time DS recognizes a broader user community in the public that values rare and unique works of historical, literary and artistic significance.
The archives of the Franchthi Project include color images, an extensive collection of black and white negatives and contact prints, copies of the excavation notebooks, the original inventory books for all finds and correspondence related to the Franchthi Cave located near the southwestern tip of the Argolid peninsula across the bay from the fishing village of Kiladha, Greece.
In 1967, Tom Jacobsen began directing excavations inside the cave, under the sponsorship of Indiana University, Bloomington, on a permit issued through the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. The Franchthi Project collection also includes proceedings from a symposia held in Bloomington, a few soil samples, copies of the volumes in the Franchthi publication series, copies of many articles by Franchthi staff, and other related documents.
The collection, dating from 1917-1960 and housed in the Lilly Library, consists primarily of photographs by Frank Michael Hohenberger, 1876-1963, Brown County photographer and newspaperman.
The Hohenberger collection documents the life, customs, and scenes of the hills of Brown County, in addition to other areas of Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Mexico.
This is the collection of anthropologist Fred McEvoy’s photographs from his 1967-1968 research among Sabo labor migrants in southeastern Liberia.
Below are a selection of Media Studies and Communication Organization in the United States. For additional organizations, see the following resources:
Indiana University GradGrants Center (GGC)
National Communication Association Resources:
See also:
See below for calls for paper (CFPs) and conference lists:
Below is a selection of conferences focusing on Media Studies:
For additional resources, explore our related LibGuides. A LibGuide (which is what you are reading right now) provides research assistance and resources compiled by IU librarians:
Jordan Schonig Film & Media Studies YouTube Lectures. Jordan Schonig is a professor of Film, Television and Digital Media at Texas Christian University. His YouTube videos cover film theory and film analysis.
Video: Walter Benjamin and Aura: "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility" Part 1. Jordan Schonig (2021).