A free online resource, featuring millions of pages of books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.

Led by Eric Hoyt and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

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Lantern is the search platform for the collections of the Media History Digital Library. Enter a search term below to begin exploring the 2,891,200 pages of digitized books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.

If you would like to search the titles of the publications within the MHDL, you can use the Publication Search instead.

Remembering David Bordwell

Portrait of David Bordwell standing in an office filled with books

David Bordwell, emeritus professor of Film, passed away earlier this year. The global community of film and media researchers has deeply felt this loss, and have been celebrating David's incredible impact on the field.

David wrote 20 books, yet none of these were a revised version of his dissertation. His doctoral dissertation is part of the David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson papers, housed at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. The dissertation has now been scanned, and is available to read online in the Media History Digital Library - its pages are all searchable within Lantern.

Despite the fact that so much archival research takes place individually, in quiet rooms, the truth is that archives are massively collaborative enterprises and scholarship becomes meaningful when shared in community. David embodied this, and passed it on, again and again. Now, as we mourn Davis’s loss, we recognize that it’s on us to keep it going.

Read Dissertation
A scan from a magazine. There are several photographs from the film 'Gold-Diggers of 1933' and the heading text 'They're in the Money'

Support the MHDL

We launched this website ten years ago. If we've helped you, please consider donating to our UW Foundation account. Your contribution will help us keep going.

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A cropped portion of the cover of the book Ink-Stained Hollywood

Ink-Stained Hollywood

Learn about the history of Hollywood trade papers in Eric Hoyt's new book. Available in paperback or free digital edition from University of California Press.

Go to Book
A scan from a printed book. There is an illustration of a microscope on the left. On the right, the text reads 'Research on Value and Utilization of Audio-Visual Materials'

Teaching with the MHDL

Over the past several years, film and media educators have used the Media History Digital Library in highly innovative and effective ways, crafting creative and challenging assignments that go beyond what we could have hoped for when we first developed this project.

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Get in touch!

Are you using the MHDL to work on an amazing project? Have you found something unexpected in our collections? We want to hear from you!