Using Alexander Street: Basics
Watch this video to learn the basics of using Alexander Street.
Welcome to this NYFA Library video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to be demonstrating the basic functionality of the Alexander Street database.
This database contains digitized screenplays that the company Alexander Street has licensed directly from a number of studios. So, they are often final drafts of screenplays. Most of which are from sort of the Golden Age of Hollywood era. There are a few more recent screenplays in here as well.
But, the first step to accessing these, you can see we’re currently logged in, we’re at kind of like, the login page of the Alexander Street database. And to access our collection you just need to go over to My Collections and select Film Scripts Online. And this will load us directly into our database. You’ll see there’s a total count here of 1004 screenplays in the database.
There’s a couple different ways to access the collection. You can scroll down here and browse through various kinds of categories. There’s scripts, the entirety of the scripts, various people, genre, you can search by award, like Academy Award nominees and winners. And they have a little bit of Featured Content down here at the bottom. So, you know, BIlly Wilder scripts, for instance. Scripts from Ealing Studios, things of that nature. So, of course you can click through directly on one of these like I’m doing now, and it will give you a list, you can browse 10 results of Billy Wilder scripts directly.
Now, you can also, of course, search this collection. So, again, I’m going to go back to our collection, Menu, My Collections, Film Scripts Online, and there’s a search bar here. I can also search directly like Billy Wilder, for instance, kinda just do a keyword search here. And you’ll see it comes back this time with 23 results searching Billy Wilder across the entirety of these records. So not only things directed by Billy Wilder, like this film here, but also produced by Billy Wilder, or anywhere else in the record where his name would show up. So, it’s not always going to necessarily be things that were directed by him, but projects he was otherwise attached to, lets say.
Now, of course, there’s a couple different things you can do from this point. You can, as with any of our databases, you can limit down your search results here on the left hand side in various different ways. Genre of film, Director/Producer, Performer, these sort of things. You can also search within the results, so you can keep this search term, Billy Wilder, and then add to that with a more refined search. So, you know, I could search Stalag 17 for instance, within the results, and it should, yeah, bring us just that specific result. Now, if you wanted to start a fresh search, you can clear your search results here, or you can go back to the top. Just go back to the beginning of the collection, and start a new search here. Again, if you search something more specific than Billy Wilder, for instance, you should receive back just that direct result.
So yeah, this concludes the tutorial on the basic functionality of the Alexander Street database.