Media History Digital Library

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The MHDL is an open-access digital archive featuring millions of pages of books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.

Led by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

MHDL Websitehttps://mediahist.org
Lantern Searchhttps://lantern.mediahist.org
WCFTRhttps://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu

This week over 200 scholars, teachers, archivists, and creators will be participating in the inaugural Hollywood Conference. Whether you're attending the conference or just following along via social media, check out this list of online resources that WCFTR Director Eric Hoyt has compiled for studying Hollywood's rich and storied history.

https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/index.php/2025/07/17/resources-for-studying-the-hollywood-studio-system-with-thanks-to-dear-friends/

Resources for studying the Hollywood Studio System, with thanks to dear friends

An extraordinary gathering is taking place this week at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Over 200 scholars, teachers, archivists, and creators will be participating in the inaugural Hollywood Conference. An ambitious …

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

A huge thank you to The People's Archive at The DC Public Library for digitizing the complete runs of "TeleVISIONS" (1975-81) and "Community Video Report" (1973-74) — both of which are now available to search and browse in the MHDL!

These were early trade magazines for the emerging videotape, cable TV and satellite broadcasting industries published by the Washington Community Video Center, a collective focused on using emerging technologies to democratize media access.

https://mediahist.org/features/publications-volumes.php?id=TeleVISIONS

TeleVISIONS

Read about the intercontinental exchange of cinema ideas and information in Global Movie Magazine Networks (UC Press), a new collection edited by Eric Hoyt and Kelley Conway. The essays in this collection reveal the hybridity, heterogeneity, and connectivity of movie magazines and the important role they play in the intercontinental exchange of information and ideas about cinema.

A free ebook version of this title is available online through Luminos.

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/global-movie-magazine-networks/paper

Global Movie Magazine Networks by Eric Hoyt, Kelley Conway - Paper

Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

University of California Press

🎬 Exciting News! 🎬

We've digitized over 350 pressbooks from the Wilkinson Pressbook Collection, which are now available online in the @mhdl! Dive into a treasure trove of film history with these new scans, including pressbooks from Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, MGM, and several independent distributors.

Check out this blog post by WCFTR Fellow Zachary Zahos to learn more: https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/index.php/2025/01/06/new-at-the-media-history-digital-library-the-wilkinson-pressbook-collection/

“New at the Media History Digital Library: The Wilkinson Pressbook Collection”

By Zachary Zahos The Media History Digital Library has recently returned from a trip to that most fabled and misunderstood decade, the 1960s, with a treasure trove of freshly digitized film pressbooks in tow. Newly …

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

We're happy to learn the that the Internet Archive (@internetarchive) is now partially back online, with content available in a read-only state. This means that all page scans should now once again be viewable at https://mediahist.org and searchable at https://lantern.mediahist.org

The MHDL uses the Internet Archive to store high-quality versions of our scanned materials, which enables us to share them widely and freely. You can read more about their ongoing work to perform mantainence and upgrade systems on the Internet Archive Blog:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/21/internet-archive-services-update-2024-10-21/

Media History Digital Library

Good morning, MHDL users -

The Internet Archive website is offline, again, due to ongoing DDoS attacks. This will once again make all page scans unavailable on https://mediahist.org and https://lantern.mediahist.org

You can check The Internet Archive's Twitter page for more up-to-date information on their server status: https://twitter.com/internetarchive

Media History Digital Library

The Internet Archive website is now back online, and their team is currently assessing the extent of damage/compromised systems. See https://x.com/brewster_kahle/status/1844183111514603812 for more info.

Page scans are once again available on our sites, and should remain visible. There's no evidence of any compromised data or private information from mediahist.org servers and applications -- though if you have an archive.org account, you should update your passwords there.

Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) on X

What we know: DDOS attack–fended off for now; defacement of our website via JS library; breach of usernames/email/salted-encrypted passwords. What we’ve done: Disabled the JS library, scrubbing systems, upgrading security. Will share more as we know it.

X (formerly Twitter)

The Internet Archive is offline due to numerous attacks in the past days.

As a result, all page scans are currently unavailable on lantern.mediahist.org and mediahist.org.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and will provide updates as soon as we are able.

https://twitter.com/brewster_kahle/status/1844133492453671192

Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) on X

Yesterday's DDOS attack on @internetarchive repeated today. We are working to bring https://t.co/Hk02WjumkL back online.

X (formerly Twitter)

Check out the Velvet Light Trap's CFP on Continuity and Change in Media Representation. They’re interested in diverse archival and historiographic debates in film and television representation, including from global to local scales. Submissions welcome from reception, industry, as well as production histories:

https://t.co/SYtJHaAZEl

CFP: VLT 96 Continuity and Change in Media Representation

CFP: Continuity and Change in Media Representation The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 96 (to be published Fall 2025) Special Issue Theme Representation matters has become a popular idiom conveying the transformative power of media representation to reframe cultural narratives and material conditions...

Google Docs

In addition to continually scanning and uploading more magazines for the Media History Digital Library (@mhdl), we are also regularly looking back over the old scans to make sure that the metadata is accurate and that everything appears online exactly as you expect.

Read more about the ongoing process in this blog post by graduate student Ben Pettis:

https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/index.php/2024/07/31/wrangling-date-metadata-in-the-media-history-digital-library/

Wrangling Date Metadata in the Media History Digital Library

For over a decade the Media History Digital Library (MHDL) has supported film and media studies by providing online access to trade papers, fan magazines, and other primary source materials. Lantern, the search platform for the MHDL, provides full-text search for millions of pages within the collections. I have worked as one of the main MHDL developers for the past 4+ years. During that time, I have seen first-hand the various interconnected systems and tools—as well as continual “behind the scenes” work—that keeps things running smoothly. This work is not always visible or apparent to users, so what I’d like to do with this blog post is share what some of this work has involved.

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research