How to Use the ETRC Video Database
Educational Technology Resource Center | DoIT

This database is a listing of films and videotapes owned by Roosevelt University Educational Technology Resource Center. These materials are available for use by Roosevelt University faculty and students. Faculty members can borrow these materials for home previews or for use in classes at Robin Campus; students can view the tapes in the ETRC viewing area at the downtown campus.

The ETRC numbers indicate where the items are shelved: five digit numbers beginning 13--- are in the ¾" U-Matic format; four digit numbers beginning 0--- are 16 mm films; all other four digit numbers are either in the Beta or VHS formats. When you look up an item, get the media number so the media center staff people can find it on the shelf.

The title is the actual title of the film or tape. You can look up materials by title if you know the exact title, or significant words in the title. (See Strategies for Searching, below).

The subject headings are based on academic disciplines, and are very broadly defined, such as Psychology, History, Geography, Education, and so on.

The series listings are for those tapes that are part of a larger series, such as The Africans, World of Abnormal Psychology, The World at War (a British series about World War II), and so on.

The date and director listings are indicated primarily for feature-length films and some documentaries, where that information is important.

Strategies for Searching

If you know the exact title, you can use that information to look it up by title, but it is often better to use one significant word from the title, rather than the entire title, because you may not know quirks of spelling or punctuation in the entries. For example, if West Side Story was entered as Westside or West-Side, you would miss it by spelling out the entire title, but you would find it by entering west . (You would also find a few other titles which have "west" as part of the title, but in most cases when you use this method of searching, you will only get a few extraneous listings). Another example is Roger and Me, which is entered as Roger & Me; the computer does not recognize the ampersand sign (&) as equivalent to the word "and" and will miss this listing, but if you enter "Roger," you will find the listing for Roger & Me.

Some additional examples: if you enter psyc (either as title or subject), you will get listings for psychology, psychologist(s), psychiatry, and so on, which will give you more listings than if you had entered psychology. Likewise, if you enter Africa, you will not only get listings for Africa and African, but also for African-American. However, you would not get listings that were entered as Afro-American, because the computer only recognizes the similar spelling, not words that are cognates.