Cabrillo College Library


What's on this page

 
Mr Holland's Opus

 

 

Name_______________________________

Before we get started --

  1. Go to the Web page for this class -- from the Cabrillo College Library homepage, click on Internet Links,
    then select English, then scroll down, and under Course-Related Materials, click on ENGL 2 Cowan.
  2. Make this page a Favorite. Click on Favorites at the top of your screen, then click on Add. Now, you can
    get back to this page easily by going to Favorites.

Rules of the Road -- 1) You can take notes on this handout. Or, you can open a Word document and take notes
that way. 2) We like to support your research up here in the classroom, so we allow you to print while you are here
with your class for free -- but no more than about 20 pages per person.

Reviews 
published in periodicals -- Use Academic Search Premier, which provides access to articles
published in about 8,000 periodicals since about 1990 (for some titles, the files go back to even earlier dates).
For most of those periodicals, full text copies of the articles are in the database.

  1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage, click on Full Text Articles
  2. On the next screen, under General (on the left), click on Academic Search Premier
  3. On the next screen, click to go to the Advanced Search mode



    With the Advanced search screen, you can most efficiently search more than one term at a time.

  4. Click on the little box next to the word Full text to limit your search to fulltext articles on the database.



  5. Type in your search terms -- i.e., the name of your film -- and hit Search.

From the results list, click on the article title to get to the screen with more information. Note here
if you found a review for your film, where it was published, and if it's extensive enough to be helpful:

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

Academic Search Premier offers you a way to email your article, and you can also click to
get already formatted citations for it:

To find reviews published in Newspapers, use Proquest Newspapers

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
  2. Click on Full Text Articles
  3. Under News, over on right, click on Proquest Newspapers

    Look for a review of your movie and make notes about what you find:

    ______________________________________________

    ______________________________________________

    You can also email these articles to yourself, and get citations for them!!


Reviews for "classic" films, and for movies released and reviewed in the last fifteen years or so, are
available on the Web.

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage.
  2. Click on Internet Links
  3. Then click on Film

There are a number of Web sites that offer reviews. The Internet Movie Database is the most extensive,
but you'll probably want to explore all the Web sites listed under General Websites -- especially Rotten
Tomatoes
, and, under Specific Aspects, look at Movie Review Query Engine (MBQE).

Note here if you found a review for your film, which Web site it's at, and if it's extensive enough to be helpful:

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

Find Reviews via Google -- Google will help you find movie reviews published on the Web. Since anyone
(pretty much) can publish on the Web, it's important to evaluate what you find.

Your search result in Google, now, will usually include Show options. Try clicking there!

Try the Wonder wheel. It may not do wonders for your current topic, but next time you
use Google, give it a try!

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

You need to check with your instructor during your search for critiques and reviews to see
if she will accept the film you are thinking of writing about.

Find at least two reviews or critiques of your film.  Note here two points that you find illuminating from a critical perspective
    Your film _____________________________

    1._________________________________________________

       _________________________________________________

       _________________________________________________
     

    2._________________________________________________ 

       _________________________________________________ 

      _________________________________________________
     
     


Information about semiotics and stereotypes

To get good background information on stereotyping:

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
  2. Click on Full Text Articles
  3. Click on CREDO reference under Encyclopedias/Background Information (center column)

Here's a sample search for information about stereotyping in the movies. Note how I have used the asterisk
( * ) to truncate the word stereotype so I get stereotype, stereotypes, stereotyping, etc.

Use CREDO reference. What did you find?

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

More books!!!

Google is busy digitizing books. About 12 million are in their database. Here's one kind of scanner
they are using. Go to books.google.com. Here are some --

Latino Images in Film || Media and Minorities || America on Film || Media Semiotics

With Google Books, you are sometimes blocked from reading the entire book online (there's a
publishers' suit which is yet to be resolved).

The Cabrillo College Library has whole books online that you can read clear through.
To get to them --

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
  2. Click on Full Text Articles
  3. Under General (top left), click on NetLibrary E-Books

Here are good Web resources for semiotics and stereotypes -- Semiotics for Beginners Stereotypes -- Race and Ethnicity

Sol Worth's classic book Studying Visual Communication (edited, with an Introduction, by Larry Gross, 1981) is online, along with its illustrations.  Scroll down to where the illustrations are listed. Here are some really interesting ones about the process of communication: Ideal model || Probable model

Style Guides -- how to cite the resources you use -- are posted to the Library's Internet Links page  

  1. Be on the Cabrillo College Library homepage
  2. Click on Internet Links
  3. Then click on Style Guides

The MLA Formatting and Style Guide from Purdue University is very helpful

Remember to look for how you can click to get an already formatted citation when using a value
added database brought to you by your library, like Academic Search Premier, etc.

To get already formatted citations for books, go to WorldCat.org. Look up your book, then click on
Cite/Export
.


 


Copy Images into Word Documents
The Web is rich in images. If you copy and include an image in something you write, the origin of the
image should be acknowledged. At the minimum, give the title of the Web site and the complete URL
(you can just copy and paste the URL into your Word document -- Ctrl C to copy; Ctrl V to paste).

You can probably find an image directly related to your movie. Here's how to do that:

  1. Go to the search engine Google
  2. As the default, Google is set to search the Web. Click on Images to get into its image database
  3. Type in the name of your film. Then hit the Enter key or click on Google Search

Now that you have an image, here's how to insert it into a Word document:

  1. Open a Word document -- Start -> Word (if you don't already have one open)
  2. Click on the bottom task bar to go back to the Web page with your image.
  3. Right click on the image. Scroll down to Copy.
  4. Bring up your Word document. Position your cursor to where you want your image to be.
    Paste the picture (File ->Paste; or use Ctl V)
  5. Under or near the image, type the word Source and include the title of the Web site and
    its URL. You can write next to and below the image. To put text around the image -- click
    on the image, go to Format -> Picture. Click on Layout tab, and select the wrapping
    format you want.

Other good places to find images: Picfindr and GettyImages. Want to see if the trailer for your movie is available? Go to Blinkx -- the largest site for videos on the Internet.


Getting to This Page on the Internet
  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage    <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Internet Links
  3. Click on English and then on Course-Related Materials
  4. Click on ENGL 2, Composition and Critical Thinking, K. Cowan

K. Cowan; T. N. Smalley 
last rev. 11/09