Classic Mexican Cinema

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Overview

Classic Mexican Cinema is a small, specialized digital collection of around 40,000 pages issued as one of the Brill Primary Sources collections. The five periodicals featured are from the Archives of the Filmoteca of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). In addition to periodicals the collection includes the personal scrapbook of filmmaker Fernando de Fuentes, as well as 50 rare lobby cards.

Provider:

Brill

Posted:

Apr 12, 2012 2:43pm

Updated:

Jun 8, 2020 1:12pm

Source

CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.

Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas:

Arts and Humanities

Resource Types:

Archival materials

Personal papers

Photographs

Print journals

Major Languages:

Spanish

- Denotes data sourced directly from publisher

Content Details:


Geographic coverage	Mexico, Latin America, some North America
Chronological coverage	Primarily 1930s to 1960
Content types	Periodicals; handbills; scrapbooks
Source formats	paper
Total titles	5
Total pages	c. 40,000
Digital collection launch date	December, 2011
Update frequency	NA
Collection ongoing	N
Completion date	December, 2011
Available supplements	NA

Specifications

Metadata:


MARC records available	Y
Creator of MARC records	NA
Structural metadata exposed anywhere?	N
Subject authorities used	LC
Name authorities used	LC

Technical Platform:


Browser compatibility	IE 7+; Firefox 2.0+
Authentication options	IP, username/ password
Archiving solution – master files	NA
Archiving solution – derivative files	NA
Availability in web discovery tools	N
Open URL target	N
Federated searching, z39.50	N
Local host option	N
Usage statistics	Y (Counter)

Interface Tools:


Full text displayed	N
Page images	Y
Color images	Y (100% including color reproduction of bw pages)
Search full text	Y
Advanced search	N
Search within results	N
Limit results by dates and/or document types	N
Display highlighted search terms	Y
Display snippet -- search term in context	Y
Relevance sorting	Y
Save searches	N
Download PDF	Y
Download HTML	N
Print page	Y
Print full document	Y
Export citations	N
Annotation tools	N
Cross-product searching	N
ILL	N
Restrictions on use	No limit on concurrent use; fair use policy

Terms and Provider Details

Terms:


	Options
Subscription option	N
Purchase option	Y
Multiple year payments option	N
Hosting charges	N
List of purchasers available	Available upon request.
Sample license available	Y
MARC records purchase fee	N
Price tier basis	NA

Provider:

Brill

Website:

http://www.brill.com/

Main Address:

Plantijnstraat 2

2321 JC Leiden The Netherlands

Netherlands

CRL Review

Collection Content:

Classic Mexican Cinema is a small, specialized digital collection of around 40,000 pages issued as one of the Brill Primary Sources collections. Brill notes that “many of our primary source collections are unique, as they are often the only source of rare documents outside of the source library itself.” The five periodicals featured in Classic Mexican Cinema are from the unique Archives collection of the Filmoteca at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The titles have been selected to represent the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema from the 1930s to 1960, when Mexican films were distributed throughout Latin America as well as the U.S. and Europe. The extent of holdings varies but is not extensive for any of the five titles. El Cine Gráfico is rarely found, and issues are presented here for 1935 and 1957 only. El Mundo Ilustrado is the earliest title, with holdings provided from 1902 to 1910.

In addition to the periodicals, the database includes “dozens of film flyers” and images from the scrapbooks of filmmaker Fernando de Fuentes (1894-1958).

Delivery:

The interface functions are basic. Text is searchable as full text, not indexed by type of text such as article title. Results can be sorted by relevance or date. Search terms are shown in excerpted context, and then highlighted in the PDF display. But it can be difficult to determine results context for several reasons: the results excerpt displays raw OCR text, often with transcription errors; if one returns to search results from the PDF page display, no highlighting differentiates which result link has been followed; in two of six results checked, the search term was not actually displayed on the page.

The page imaged documents are presented in a standard PDF window that unfortunately does not expand to full screen. The publisher indicates that all pages were scanned in color, and it is quite valuable to have featured graphics depicted in their original color format. But low contrast levels optimized to reveal details in the numerous half-tone movie publicity photos result in murky presentation of text, often compromising legibility. The image sharpness also varies, and the presentation images are not high resolution files. They can be downloaded as PNG files from the document PDFs.

Terms:

The collection is available for purchase. The published list price as of April, 2012, is U.S. $8,990.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

These are unique materials preserved through digitization. The collection should have varying uses for study and research of popular Latin American culture and the history of film media up through the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, it is a rather expensive investment in a relatively small group of materials. It is fortunate that MARC records have been provided, but wide indexing of the text in web scale discovery tools is recommended (despite inconsistent results in full text searching) in order to avoid these materials becoming isolated from more extensive research collections.

Reviewers:

Center for Research Libraries

Virginia Kerr - Digital Program Manager

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.

CRL Offers & Status

Status	Current	Description
CRL Flagged	no	Potential interest to CRL community
Offer Pending	no	Currently a candidate for CRL offer
Active Offer	no	Currently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial Access	no	Available for trial
Renewal Offer	no	Currently offered for renewal
Expired Offer	yes	Past offers
Inactive / Declined	no	No longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRL	yes	Evaluation available by CRL and community
Special Access	no	Member-only access available for a limited time

The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.

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