Projects

Periodicals Indexing Project (P.I.P.)

Before 1972, indexing of film journals had been a hit-and-miss affair. A few FIAF archives attempted to cover all the major titles, and they could only index selectively those in the less well-known languages. Many of the smaller archives indexed none at all. Every FIAF archive with ambitions to have a documentation service indexed some journals, usually the same ten or twenty of the best-known periodicals, as well as the most useful of their own national journals. It was obvious that there was wasteful duplication of effort and resources.

In 1971, it was Karen Jones from the FIAF Documentation Commission who presented the proposal to establish the P.I.P. at the FIAF Congress in Wiesbaden. Initially the service involved sending out batches of 10,000 cards to FIAF affiliates every year. Word got around and institutions outside FIAF began to request subscriptions. The decision was made to publish the data in annual volumes, making it available to a much wider public, including libraries, academic institutions and individual researchers and students. The original card service was replaced by microfiches in 1983. Ten years later, the microfiches were in turn replaced by a biannual CD-ROM edition, containing not only the data from the International Index to Film Periodicals  but also several other FIAF databases. Between 1979 and 1998, a limited number of TV periodicals were indexed in the International Index to Television Periodicals. Since 1998, television periodicals are no longer indexed, but TV related articles from film journals are still indexed. 

The rapid advancement of technology in the past years has had an impact on the project. Demands from our users for improved access and the availability of new technical solutions have led to the release of the FIAF International FilmArchive Database in 2000. This new version (available on CD-ROM and on the Internet) uses SilverPlatter software, and is currently distributed by Ovid. In 2006, an additional interface was introduced. The same FIAF databases are available online through Chadwyck-Healey, the humanities publisher owned by ProQuest. In the near future, a new web based indexing system will be introduced, which will enable P.I.P. contributors to access the central database through the Internet.