research databases - best bets
These databases are the best places to start finding academic research articles for a theatre research paper assignment. You can search the databases by keyword, and the search results will give you a list of articles with their authors, titles, and the names of the journals they appear in.
- Literature OnlineA fully searchable Library of literary works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies, key criticism and reference resources.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowMulti-disciplinary full-text database with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Indexes and abstracts more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, and conference proceedings.
- Arts and Humanities Citation IndexThe Arts & Humanities Citation Index in Web of Science indexes 87 major American and European art periodicals such as Apollo, ARTnews, Art Bulletin, museum journals, etc.
- JSTORSearchable full-text journal backfile collection. Individual titles are listed in the E-Journals A-Z.
- Project MuseCovers literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, etc. Contains current full text scholarly journals which cover these fields and a significant collection of recent scholarly books.
other online databases for theatre
Primary sources / play scripts online:
- American DramaContains more than 1,100 dramatic works from the early eighteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth. Includes plays in verse, farces, melodramas, minstrel shows, realist plays, frontier plays, and temperance dialogues. Major dramatists featured include Clyde Fitch, Augustin Daly, David Belasco, James Herne, and Joaquin Miller.
- Black DramaFull-text database that provides access to over 1,300 plays, including works by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Additionally includes information on related productions, theaters, production companies as well as selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Some 500 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors.
- Twentieth Century North American DramaContains 1,530 plays by more than 220 playwrights, together with information on related productions, theaters, and production companies. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Library subscription video sites to search for performances
- Academic Video OnlineAVON is a huge academic streaming collection with feature-length films and documentaries, and PBS-type clips and productions and lots of interviews with arts practitioners (directors, visual artists, etc.), among many other videos
- Theatre in Video--> Use the "Filter your results" tool (red circle with a picture of a funnel) to limit your content type to "Performances" -- there are about 100, mainly late 20th-C. performances on the site.
- National Theatre CollectionFrom Shakespeare and Greek tragedy to contemporary literary adaptations, NTC features productions from the National Theatre, as well as the Young Vic, Donmar Warehouse, and Bridge Theatre. Drawing on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NTs Archive, this collection currently contains 30 productions.
- RSC Live 1 (2013-2017) [Royal Shakespeare Company]Seventeen films of live productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2013 to the 2016-17 production of The Tempest starring Simon Russell Beale.
- RSC Live 2 (2018-2019) [Royal Shakespeare Company]Eight films of live productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2018 and 2019, including Twelfth Night starring Adrian Edmondson.
- Shakespeare's Globe on Screen 1 (2008-2015)Twenty-one films recorded live on the Globe stage from leading actors including Mark Rylance, Stephen Fry, and Roger Allam’s Olivier Award-winning Falstaff in Henry IV. Founded by the pioneering American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare's Globe is dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare's work and the theatre for which he wrote.
- Shakespeare's Globe on Screen 2 (2016-2018)Includes nine productions from the Globe Theatre, including two productions from Emma Rice’s tenure as Artistic Director and the first production from the indoor Jacobean theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
find newspaper articles and reviews
- Access World NewsFull-text of over 600 U.S. newspapers. Access World News also covers over 1,300 foreign English-language news resources. Spanish-language editions of the newspapers are also included.
- New York TimesRead recent stories from the New York Times. Includes full text and, since May 2020, some selected images. Coverage: 1980-current
- New York Times Historical EditionSearchable full-text from ProQuest, with keyword searching and date limiting. This title is part of Proquest Historical Newspapers.
- Nexis UniNexis Uni provides full-text access to over 15,000 news, business, and legal sources. The outstanding news coverage includes deep archives and up-to-the-minute stories in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language news services.
Scholarly/Peer Review
Learn how to identify the characteristics of scholarly articles in Introduction to Scholarly Articles in this six minute tutorial.
Getting the Articles Themselves
Once you have found a list of citations for articles on your topic in the databases, how do you get the articles themselves?
- Sometimes the full text of the article is already attached to the database citation, as a PDF or HTML file. (Yay!) If so, just click to open, save, or print it!
- More often, the databases provide the citation only, telling you where to find the articles. Check InfoKat to see if UK Libraries has the periodical in our collection and if we have the issue or date you need. (Search by the title of the journal or magazine, not the title of the specific article.)
- If our library does have the title and issue/date you need, we might have it online, in hard copy/print, or both. Click through from the InfoKat record for online versions, or for print versions, go to the shelf at the library to find and scan a copy of the article for yourself.
If UK does not collect the magazine or journal you need, or we do not have access to the issue or date you need, you can request the article via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). UK Libraries will request a scan from another library and then forward it on to you.
- InfoKat Discovery Library Catalog Search (UK Libraries Holdings)Searches the InfoKat Discovery catalog.
View Now UK
If you see a "View Now UK" button in a database, clicking it can often provide a shortcut to a journal's website, so it is worth trying, but it is often faster and always more accurate to check InfoKat to see if our library provides access to a periodical you need.