Reference books provide background information on a topic, such as definitions of terms, key figures and events, and well written overviews. They can be a useful starting point for any research project, because they fill in missing knowledge about the topic or provide you with the language of the discipline.
Selected books from our collection:
Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film by 
The Manual of Photography by 
The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies by 
The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography by 
Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography
The Digital Filmmaking Handbook by 
Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film by 
The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film by Search selected dictionaries and encyclopedias from Oxford University Press:
Examples:
Examples: