Adult Film History Project review
The Adult Film History Project collects the paper trail around vintage adult films. Think magazines, newsletters and advertisements. Peter Alilunas started the project in 2014, and archivist Dan Erdman joined as co-director the following year.
Follow the magazine or advertisement
The project draws on private collections and points to digital examples hosted at the Internet Archive. A dated magazine issue gives you a place and time to attach to an advert. Cinema Sewer puts vintage adverts alongside collected film writing and interviews.
Keep the issue details with the scan
The project’s guide gives scanning and cataloguing separate steps. It prefers TIFF for individual scans and suggests a multipage PDF when an item has several pages. There’s a separate record for the item and a field for notes. If I wanted to cite an advert, I’d keep the publication, issue date and page number together so I could find it again. I’d check the item's rights before reusing the scan.
Anabel’s take
I’d pick one issue from the period I was curious about. I’d read an advert alongside the articles around it to see how the pitch to readers compared with what the magazine itself had to say.