IWF Knowledge and Media
IWF Knowledge and Media offers more than 8700 media for research and
teaching purposes within its standard distribution program, which can
be fully researched using filmarchives online or the IWF online
catalogue. These media are heavily oriented topically towards the
natural sciences, but also contain significant sub-collections on
ethnology, history and other social sciences. All modern offline media
formats are fully supported; many titles are available under www.iwf.de online as well.
In
addition, some 2000 further titles are not made available in the
framework of our regular distribution channels, but can be used or
acquired in most cases upon request by persons having special interests.
It
should be noted that the IWF is the last remaining complete
Encyclopaedia Cinematographica archive in the world. The EC collection,
which once boasted of five complete and eight partial archives on four
continents, has a total holding of more than 3000 films. The EC’s aim
was to create a comprehensive and systematic collection of motion
studies, both natural and artificial. The EC philosophy was founded on
the principle of the smallest thematical unit: one object and one type
of motion which is characteristic of, or typical to, that object. The
EC’s ultimate goal was to fill in a kind of matrix in which the one
axis contained all beings or things which move and the other
encompassed all of their characteristic motions types. This goal was
never achieved, of course, but the result of the endeavour is still an
impressive body of work. The EC collection has been closed since 1994.