Archives | Articles by Subject | Biography | Blogs | Books | Dictionaries & Encyclopedias
Images | Moving Images | Plays | Performance Reviews | Book Reviews 

• New York Public Library for the Performing Arts – The Billy Rose Theatre Collection
  One of the largest archives devoted to the theatrical arts. Particularly strong in New York City theatre history. Also note Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT)—archive of recorded Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions.
• Performing Arts in America 1875–1923
  Excellent resource published by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Drawing on their collections for text, audio and video content, this site documents theater during this period ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway.

• Dance Heritage Coalition
  DHC was established to address problems identified by a field-wide study of the current state of preservation and documentation of American dance. Resource for archives.
• George Balanchine Catalogue
  Online searchable database of all known dances created by Balanchine, giving details of the first performance, major revisions, stagings, and visual records in a condensed form. Includes filmography and more.
• Internet Archive
  Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, IA is working to preserve a multimedia ranging from the Prelinger Archives, dance materials, text.
• Jacob's Pillow Dance
  Documents the history of the Festival and School, artists with particular emphasis on Ted Shawn and the Denishawn Company.
• New York Public Library for the Performing Arts – Jerome Robbins Dance Division
  "Largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance."
• Twyla Tharp
  Links to current and archival information on the choreographer and works.

• Theatre & Dance
  
• World Theatre & Dance
  
• General & Interdisciplinary
• History
• Philosophy
• Religion
• Anthropology

• International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance
  International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text contains all of the content available in International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance as well as full text for 100 titles.
• International Index to the Performing Arts
  Search and browse nearly half a million citations, abstracts, and selected full text records in a comprehensive range of journals covering the full spectrum of the performing arts. Subjects covered include drama, dance, film, television.

• ABSEES: American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies
  Indexes North American publications related to Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
• Bibliography of Asian Studies
  Indexes materials on all fields of Asian Studies.
• FRANCIS
  Search for articles in 4200 international journals in all fields. Citations only.
• Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) Search Page, Library of Congress
  Indexes publications from and about Latin American and the Caribbean.
• Index Islamicus
  Indexes books and articles on Islam and the Muslim world.

• 19th Century Masterfile
  Includes several 19th-century periodical indexes and the New York Daily Tribune Index (1875-1906).
• Alternative Press Index
  More than 300 alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals covering cultural, economic, political, and social change. Coverage is international and interdisciplinary.
• Alternative Press Index Archive
  Index of journals (1969-1990) featuring alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals.
• American Periodicals Series Online, 1740-1900
  Searchable full-text and page images of several hundred American periodicals of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
• Essay and General Literature Index
  Provides access to nearly 65,000 essays contained in some 5,300 anthologies and collections. Some 300 single and multi-author collections are indexed annually, plus more than 20 selected annuals and serials. Coverage spans the entire range of the humanities.
• Google Scholar
  Search for articles, papers, conference proceedings.
• Humanities and Social Science Retrospective
  Search journals in the humanities and social sciences from 1907-1983.
• Humanities full-text
  Indexes articles from over 500 arts and humanities periodicals. Also useful for finding book reviews, movie reviews, play reviews, and creative writing published in journals, magazines and literary reviews. Covers such academic disciplines as archaeology.
• Proquest
  Coverage of magazines, few scholarly publications and newspapers.
• Reader's Guide
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals.
• Reader's Guide Retrospective
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals from 1890 through 1982.

• America, History and Life
  Premiere source for research on all aspects of US and Canadian history from prehistory to the present from articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations. Provides abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
• Historical Abstracts
  Premiere source for research on all aspects of non-U.S. and non-Canadian history covering content from 1450 to the present from articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations.

• Philosopher Index
  More than 480 journals, books, and anthologies in the areas of ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysic logic, philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education, and language. 1940 to the present.

• ATLAreligion
  Provides abstracts and indexing for articles, essays, and book reviews in over 1550 journals and multi-author works dealing with religious and theological scholarship. International in scope and language.

• Anthropological Literature
  Comprehensive international resource for the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and related interdisciplinary research. Indexes entries at least two pages long in nearly 900 journals and monographic series held in Harvard University's Tozzer Library.

• Biography Index
  Provides citations for biographical articles, books, and other publications.
• Biography Resource Center
  Full-text biographies of persons living and deceased from all over the world.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography
  Biographical essays on authors from America, Britain, and selected other countries. Includes screenwriters and playwrights.
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  Biographies of peoples of the British Isles from the 4th century B.C. to the year 2002 including persons from the performing arts.
• Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
  Biographical guide to the earliest years of moving pictures, 1871-1901.

• The Broadway Pulse
  The Broadway Pulse, maintained by BroadwayWorld.com's editorial staff, highlights the most interesting goings on in the world of theater—online and off.

• Cambridge Collections Online
  Subject or theme-based PDF collections of CambridgeUniversity Press titles. Includes significant collection of the Cambridge Companion series. Browse by title or keyword search entire full-text.
• Cambridge Histories Online
  Full text online access to the complete 250-plus volumes of Cambridge Histories reference series. Included are The Cambridge History of American Theatre and The Cambridge History of British Theatre.
• CLIO: Columbia Libraries Information Online
  Search for books, journal holdings, plays, screenplays, videos, DVDs and sound recordings.

• Encyclopedia of Dance
  Articles on all aspects of dance, including theatrical, ritual, dance-drama, folk, traditional, ethnic, and social dance.
• Encyclopedia of Television
  Includes 1,000 original essays from more than 250 contributors and examines specific programs and people, historic moments and trends, major policy disputes and much more.
• Film Language Glossary
  Multimedia definitions of essential film studies terms.
• Gale Virtual Reference
  History of the American Cinema, is now available electronically through the Gale Virtual Reference Collection. This essential resource, also available in print, documents American film history decade by decade currently through the 1980s. In addition, Gale Virtual Reference includes The Columbia Companion to American History on Film: How the Movies Have Portrayed the Past, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Movies Made for Television: 1964-2004, and Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film.
• Glossary of Film Terms
  Written and designed for the web by Joel Schlemowitz. Definitions of film terms.
• International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers
  Comprehensive resource provides thorough coverage of films and filmmakers.
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
  provides information about theater and performance from ancient Greece to the present.
• Oxford English Dictionary
  The OED.
• Oxford Reference Online
  Searchable full-text of about 100 language dictionaries and reference books published by Oxford University Press. See section "Performing Arts".

• Accunet/Associated Press Multimedia Archive
  Image archive of the Associated Press.
• American Memory: Library of Congress
  a rich collection of images and full-text documents relating to U.S. history and culture from the Library of Congress.
• Archive of Americana
  Comprehensive historical collections including the American Broadsides and Ephemera Collection containing scanned images of playbills, photographs, poems, advertising cards, passenger lists and more.
• ARTstor
  Digital images of architecture, painting, photography, scultpure, decorative arts, design and material culture.
• Black Studies Center
  Cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies. Includes full-text articles and newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, still and moving images documenting African American experience and history.
• CLIO: Columbia Libraries Information Online
  Search for books, journal holdings, plays, screenplays, videos, DVDs and sound recordings.
• Early Encounters: peoples, cultures, and the environment
  Contains 1,482 authors and over 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. Includes more than 1,700 images.
• Google Images
  Search for images on the web.
• Visible Earth
  search or browse this collection of images, visualizations, and animations of Earth.

• American Memory from the Library of Congress
  Includes early motion pictures.
• American Memory: Library of Congress
  a rich collection of images and full-text documents relating to U.S. history and culture from the Library of Congress.
• Black Studies Center
  Cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies. Includes full-text articles and newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, still and moving images documenting African American experience and history.
• CLIO: Columbia Libraries Information Online
  Search for books, journal holdings, plays, screenplays, videos, DVDs and sound recordings.
• Dance in Video
  Contains streaming video files of dance productions and documentaries by influential performers and companies of the 20th century.
• Theatre in Video
  Contains streaming video files of theatrical productions.
• U B U W E B :: Film & Video
  Digital archive of avant-garde film and video.
• Vanderbilt Television News Archive
  Catalog of network (ABC, CBS, NBC) nightly television news broadcasts from 1968 to present; selected CNN video from 1998 to present.
• Youtube
  Useful for rare footage.

• Black Drama
  Contains 1,200 plays by 300 playwrights from North America, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and other locations, including the great names in drama (Zora Neale Hurston, August Wilson, Ossie Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes).
• CLIO: Columbia Libraries Information Online
  Search for books, journal holdings, plays, screenplays, videos, DVDs and sound recordings.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO)
  Contains full-page images of most books published in English and the English-speaking world prior to 1700.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
  Contains full-text British and American imprints from 1701-1800.
• English Verse Drama Database
  Contains full-text of more than 1700 English plays in verse from the end of the 13th century to the end of the 19th century.
• Literature Online (LION)
  Large searchable collection of English-language literature, plus some literary reference tools.
• Play Index
  Indexes some 31,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. Includes the ability to search over 600 monologues for auditions. Limiters include cast size and gender and appropriate grade level.
• Twentieth Century North American Drama
  Contains the full text of 1,500 plays written from the late 1800s to the present.
• Twentieth-Century Drama
  Currently includes over 1,500 plays representative of the English speaking world from 1890 to the present. When complete, the database will contain 2,500 plays.

• Alternative Press Index
  More than 300 alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals covering cultural, economic, political, and social change. Coverage is international and interdisciplinary.
• Alternative Press Index Archive
  Index of journals (1969-1990) featuring alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals.
• Bloomberg
  Links to film and stage reviews.
• Humanities full-text
  Indexes articles from over 500 arts and humanities periodicals. Also useful for finding book reviews, movie reviews, play reviews, and creative writing published in journals, magazines and literary reviews. Covers such academic disciplines as archaeology.
• International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance
  International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text contains all of the content available in International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance as well as full text for 100 titles.
• International Index to the Performing Arts
  Search and browse nearly half a million citations, abstracts, and selected full text records in a comprehensive range of journals covering the full spectrum of the performing arts. Subjects covered include drama, dance, film, television.
• Proquest
  Coverage of magazines, few scholarly publications and newspapers.
• Reader's Guide
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals.
• Reader's Guide Retrospective
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals from 1890 through 1982.

• Alternative Press Index
  More than 300 alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals covering cultural, economic, political, and social change. Coverage is international and interdisciplinary.
• Alternative Press Index Archive
  Index of journals (1969-1990) featuring alternative, radical, and left journals, newspapers, and magazines and includes selected abstracts from research journals. Indexes journals.
• Book Review Digest
  Citations and abstracts for book reviews in leading English-language periodicals.
• Book Review Digest Retro
  Excerpts from and citations to book reviews from 1905 to 1982.
• Humanities full-text
  Indexes articles from over 500 arts and humanities periodicals. Also useful for finding book reviews, movie reviews, play reviews, and creative writing published in journals, magazines and literary reviews. Covers such academic disciplines as archaeology.
• Proquest
  Coverage of magazines, few scholarly publications and newspapers.
• Reader's Guide
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals.
• Reader's Guide Retrospective
  Coverage of popular interest periodicals from 1890 through 1982.