] The Media History Digital Library (MHDL) is a non-profit, open access digital archive founded by David Pierce and directed by Eric Hoyt that compiles books, magazines, and other print materials related to the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound and makes these materials accessible online for free. The MHDL both digitizes physical materials and acquires digital copies from outside libraries, archives, collectors, and other collaborators. Most of the material in its more than 2.5 million pages is in the public domain and therefore free for all to use with no restrictions. Projects of the Media History Digital Library include its search engine Lantern and its data visualization platform Arclight, and it is currently led by the

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR) is a major archive of motion picture, television, radio, and theater research materials. Located in the headquarters building of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, the ...

at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

, in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

. Film and media studies librarian James Steffen has called the MHDL one of "the two most important digital collections today for studying media industries."

History

Film historian David Pierce founded the Media History Digital Library in 2009 to address the scholarly and fan communities' lack of access to historical film industry publications such as trade papers and fan magazines. Even those documents that had been transferred to microfilm were infrequently digitized, making both the original works and any microfilm copies only available at specific libraries, archives, and private collections. Having knowledge of copyright laws, Pierce determined that while many early Hollywood films, kinescopes, recordings, and similar materials would be protected by copyright, most publications would not. Working with partners at collections such as the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

Library, the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...

Margaret Herrick Library The Margaret Herrick Library, located in Beverly Hills, California, is the main repository of print, graphic and research materials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The library contains a digital repository and has his ...

, and the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

National Audio Visual Conservation Center as well as private collectors, Pierce began to scan the original copies of many of these publications documenting the early history of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound. In 2011, Pierce and fellow film history scholar Eric Hoyt built a website to expand access to the more than 200,000 pages of movie magazines they had digitized, which would be hosted on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. Hoyt launched the search platform Lantern in 2013 and in 2014 began work on Arclight, a data visualization platform. Pierce stepped down as director in 2017 and Hoyt assumed the position, bringing it fully under the purview of the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. In 2021, Hoyt became director of the

and brought the MHDL under its leadership.

Collections and tools

The Media History Digital Library's collections include millions of digitized pages and focus on out-of-copyright works from the early history of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound. The data is hosted by the Internet Archive. Its major collections include fan magazines, global cinema publications, Hollywood pressbooks, and trade papers. As of 2011, the MHDL collection encompassed more than 200,000 pages. By 2013, the total had reached about 489,000 pages, and by 2014, that number had grown to 800,000. In July 2022, MHDL director Eric Hoyt announced on Twitter that the collection had reached "roughly 3 million pages," and the Lantern homepage said it was "now searching 2,827,907 pages."

Collections

MHDL collections are free to use and download. They are searchable at the page level, but users can also access the full volumes via links to the Internet Archive. All page records include detailed reference information for the complete volume. Collections include short, informative descriptions written by scholars in the field to contextualize the content of each grouping.

U.S. Collections

Documents in the MHDL collections include issues from both prominent and obscure magazines and trade papers that are now out of copyright and therefore in the public domain. Notable publications that continue to this day include ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

'', ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'', ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'', and ''Boxoffice''. Major publications of significance to historians include

Motion Picture Daily ''Motion Picture Daily'' was an American daily magazine focusing on the film industry. It was published by Quigley Publishing Company, which also published the ''Motion Picture Herald''. The magazine was formed by the merging of three existing Qui ...

Moving Picture World The ''Moving Picture World'' was an influential early trade journal for the American film industry, from 1907 to 1927. An industry powerhouse at its height, ''Moving Picture World'' frequently reiterated its independence from the film studios. I ...

Photoplay ''Photoplay'' was one of the first American film (another name for ''photoplay'') fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded '' Motion Picture Story,'' a magazine also directed at fans. For mo ...

Film Daily ''The Film Daily'' was a daily publication that existed from 1918 to 1970 in the United States. It was the first daily newspaper published solely for the film industry. It covered the latest trade news, film reviews, financial updates, informatio ...

Motion Picture Herald The ''Motion Picture Herald'' was an American film industry trade paper published from 1931 to December 1972.Anthony Slide, ed. (1985)''International Film, Radio, and Television Journals'' Greenwood Press. p. 242. It was replaced by the ''QP Herald ...

Motography ''Motography'' was an American film journal that was first published in 1909 and ran until mid-1918. The magazine was published in 1909 and was originally named ''The Nickelodeon'',"Motography." The Bioscope. 9 Feb. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2015 http:// ...

, and the

New York Clipper The ''New York Clipper'', also known as ''The Clipper'', was a weekly entertainment newspaper published in New York City from 1853 to 1924. It covered many topics, including circuses, dance, music, the outdoors, sports, and theatre. It had a ...

. The MHDL organizes its U.S.-published materials under the following headings: * Books * Broadcasting & recorded sound * Early cinema * Fan magazines * Government & law * Hollywood studio system * Magic lantern * Non-theatrical film * Pressbooks * Technical journals * Theatre & vaudeville * Yearbooks

Global Collections

The MHDL's global cinema collection contains publications from around the world in the following countries and regions: * China * Europe * France * Germany ** Includes '' Der Kinematograph'' and '' Die Lichtbildbühne'', two leading publications that documented the German film industry through the

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

period, rise of

German Expressionism German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...

, and fall during the rise of the Nazis. * India * Iran * Italy * Japan * Latin America and Spanish-speaking United States * Netherlands * Switzerland * United Kingdom

Lantern

Lantern is the MHDL's primary search platform with a visualization component. It allows users to search the collections using keywords, title, year, author, subject, publisher, and/or description. First launched in 2011 by David Pierce and Eric Hoyt with Carl Hagenmaier and Wendy Hagenmaier, it was re-launched in 2022 with a design by Samuel Hansen and Ben Pettis. The search engine reads the text on every page of the MHDL's nearly 3 million pages as well as their metadata and returns the result with a preview image of the pages on which the text is displayed. In 2014, Hoyt published an article in ''Film History'' explaining the search engine's goals, methods, and concerns. He argued that scholars too frequently rely on "canonical" texts such as ''Variety'' and thus outlined the need for better data visualization tools.

Arclight

Primarily intended for scholars of the digital humanities and film history, Arclight searches the text of all pages in MHDL collections to retrieve and visualize data about keywords and trends within a given timeframe. It primarily shows the number of pages on which a search term appears, but users can also adjust the results to show the number of pages as a percentage of the total MHDL holdings. The project was funded by a "Digging into Data" grant from the

Institute for Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the ...

in the United States and the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; french: Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada, CRSH) is a Canadian federal research-funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and traini ...

in Canada. It was inspired by contemporary social science researchers' use of platforms like

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Analytics to study online conversation. The project's co-creators, Eric Hoyt and Charles R. Acland, published an edited collection, ''The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities'' outlining the method, design, and ways of using the platform.

Teaching resources

The MHDL curates and makes freely available lesson plans, toolkits, and assignments both for instructors looking to incorporate its collections into their classrooms and for students of all levels. These resources range from tutorials for those using the MHDL, Lantern, and Arclight for the first time to suggestions for experienced researchers looking to expand the scope of their work. MHDL collaborators also give presentations and workshops at various academic conferences, such as the 2021 HoMER Conference and the 2022 International Association for Media and History Conference.

Awards

Society for Cinema and Media Studies The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies) is an organization of professors and scholars. Its home office is at the University of Oklahoma, but it has members throughout the world. SCMS holds an annual confer ...

' Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award, for Lantern (2014) * Pop Culture Association's Electronic Reference Award, for Lantern (2014) *

American Association of School Librarians The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) is a division of the American Library Association (ALA) that has more than 7,000 members and serves primary school and secondary school librarians in the U.S., Canada, and even internationally. P ...

' Best Digital Tools (2014) *

and

's Digging into Data Challenge (2013) *

International Association for Media and History The International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) is a scholarly organization which brings together media historians and professionals with an interest in media history. Founded in the summer of 1977 it organizes biennial conferences, ...

's Michael Nelson Prize for a Work in Media and History (2013) * Pop Culture Association's Electronic Reference Award, for Media History Digital Library (2012)

Literature using MHDL resources

Books

* ''Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema's Trade Press'' (2022), by Eric Hoyt * ''

Buster Keaton Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...

: A Filmmaker's Life'' (2022), by James Curtis * ''Mapping Movie Magazines: Digitization, Periodicals, and Cinema History'' (2021), edited by Daniel Biltereyst and Lies Van de Vijver * ''Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture'' (2020), by Haidee Wasson * ''Applied Media Studies'' (2018), edited by Kristen Ostherr * ''Locating Classical Receptions on Screen Masks, Echoes, Shadows'' (2018), edited by Anastasia Bakogianni and Ricado Apostol * ''A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen'' (2017), edited by Arthur J. Pomeroy * ''Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video'' (2014), by Eric Hoyt

Articles, chapters, and essays

* "'How’s Your Sense of Direction?' Using Movie Magazines to Study Audiences’ Perception of Classical Hollywood Directors, 1934–1943," by Dominic Topp * "'The keenest, most intimate analysis': Profiling Female Stars of the Silent Screen in Photoplay Magazine," by Elizabeth Podnieks * "'Frankenstein Complex' in the Realm of Digital Humanities: Data Mining Classic Horror Cinema via Media History Digital Library, by Tianyu Jiang * "Digital Humanities and Media History: A Challenge for Historical Newspaper Research," by Huub Wijfjes * "Browsing the Digital Stacks: Exploring Technology Journals on the Media History Digital Library," by Derek Long * "Locked in the Coffin: Bela Lugosi and the Paradox of the Picture Personality," b
ABC
* "Who's Trending in 1910s American Cinema? Exploring ECHO and MHDL at Scale with Arclight," by Derek Long, Eric Hoyt, Kevin Ponto, Tony Tran, and Kit Hughes * "Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Audiences and the Fallout of the Talkies, 1910-1968," by Will Gotlib * "Arclights and Zoom Lenses," by Eric Hoyt, in ''The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History'' * "Modeling Media History," by Pelle Snickars * "Maternal Stars of the Silent Screen: Gender, Genre, and ''Photoplay Magazine''" by Elizabeth Podnieks * "Reconsidering the Archive: Digitization and Latin American Film Historiography," by Rielle Navitski * "Amateur cinematics: Watson and Webber’s ''The Fall of the House of Usher''," by Dwight Swanson

Reviews

The MHDL, Lantern, and Arclight have been reviewed in academic journals, including: * ''Publicaciones de la Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales'' (2021), Pamela Gionco * ''Journal of American History'' (2020), by Katie Day Good * ''Media Industries'' (2017), by James Steffen * ''American Journalism'' (2014), by Michael Stamm

References

{{reflist

External links

MHDL official site

Lantern homepage

Arclight homepage

Project Arclight website

Open-access archives Online archives Online film databases Film preservation History of film American film websites Silent film