July 18, 2016

Arcade and exhibit cards have a fascinating history of their own - they were originally manufactured by Exhibit Supply Company in Chicago and distributed through vending machines for a penny per card. These cards would often be tinted in different colors ranging from red to blue, green, purple, even aqua. Many arcade and exhibit cards dating back to the late 1920's and 1930's would depict film scenes in addition to portraits of actors and actresses.

April 10, 2016

A writer is researching on Newspapers.com, happily searching and clipping away (the website has an awesome clipping feature), accumulating information for a project. What is the best way to keep these clippings (usually saved in PDF format from Newspapers.com) organized in your computer without losing pertinent information? If a newspaper clipping is going to be referred to in the article the writer is working on, the title of that newspaper story must be referred to, along with the byline if any, the name of the newspaper, the location (city and state) of the newspaper, and date it appeared in.

February 14, 2016

After spending many hours researching that famous person from stage or film, you finally discover one particular silent film which appeals to you in some manner - perhaps after reading a number of reviews, seeing a lobby card or two, or even a few stills from the movie - but remains largely unviewable. Maybe the movie itself is classified under "lost film" status, or does exist in print form in a film archive somewhere in Europe but for some reason not transferred to DVD.

January 12, 2016

The use of poetry in non-fiction books such as history, biography or religion as a reference was common during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Snippets of poetry verses pertaining to a certain idea presented in the actual text - or even a footnote - was artistic as well as aesthetic. Longer sections of verse might also be used within the too, as in the following example where a poem by Lord Byron is used to describe Rousseau in "The Confessions" (London: Aldus Society, 1903):

December 31, 2015

Approaching research for an article on a specialized subject is as important as writing the article itself. When it comes to research where multiple sources, dates, even identical titles are involved, checking and re-checking the facts must be done while making notes for the article to be written. For example, if research is being conducted on a silent film actor who made a silent film - and later on a talkie - bearing the same title, and a second actor made a silent film of the same title one year later after the first actor (it has actually happened!), confusion can arise.