Theatre and Dance: Getting Started with your Research

Finding Theatre and Dance books

UC Library Search
Use the catalog to find books, e-books, government publications, journals, newspapers, maps, music scores, sound, film and video recordings, computer files, dissertations, videos, and other materials available from the UCSD Library.Sign in using your UCSD credentials to view items that you have borrowed, renew items, request books, and more.
Ebooks @ UCSD: Visual & Performing Arts

Finding published plays

Playfinder
Search for plays published by Dramatists Play Service
Inter Play
Indexes citations for international plays and playwrights in selected collections, anthologies, and periodicals. No longer updated as of December 2013.

Theatre and Dance Databases

Drama Online
Features 1200 titles from the pre-eminent theatre lists from Bloomsbury's Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare imprints, as well as and Faber and Faber Ltd. Also includes 350 Audio plays from L.A. Theatre Works and 350 modern plays from Nick Hern Books. The platform now also includes video with 21 filmed theatrical performances from Shakespeare's Globe on Screen, 4 early modern drama performances from Stage on Screen, Maxine Peake's Hamlet and a six-hour acting masterclass.
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full-Text
The definitive research tool for studying Theatre and Dance. Includes almost 500 full-text titles: 170 full-text journals and 360 full-text books. 126 countries are represented.
International Index to the Performing Arts (Full-Text) (IIPA-FT)
An index to over 200 journals and magazines in the fields of dance, drama, film, theater, opera, puppetry, circus, and other forms of performance art.
MLA International Bibliography
The primary database of citations to journal articles, monographs, book chapters, and dissertations in the fields of non-Classical literatures and folklore. Important source for linguistics and non-technical aspects of theater & film. Ca. 1890 - present.
Theatre in Context Collection
O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series are just a few of the many in-copyright sources included in the Theatre in Context Collection. Placed alongside thousands of playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, users will be able to paint a more comprehensive picture of the life and evolution of dramatic works.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database
An index to over 395 journal titles – over 160 of which are available in full text - in the fields of dance, drama, film, theater, opera, puppetry, circus, and other forms of performance art.
World Shakespeare Bibliography
Specialized, but more comprehensive for Shakespeare and some other Early Modern drama topics than MLA. Includes contemporary production reviews as well as scholarly articles and books. Available on both campuses.

Find articles in multidisciplinary resources

Academic Search Complete
Multidisciplinary database with 17,800+ journals and magazines, of which 16,000+ are peer-reviewed and 8,750+ are full-text. Also included are books, conference papers and proceedings, government documents, newspapers, video content, and more. Coverage begins in 1887, with material in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Google Scholar
Search for scholarly publications across disciplines & sources: articles, theses/dissertations, books, and more, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities etc. Use Scholar Settings-->Library Links option to setup "University of California, San Diego - Get it at UC" and if you are searching from off campus, log in to the VPN to get full access to UC San Diego subscribed article content.
JSTOR
Search by subject or browse 2,600+ full-text titles, predominantly scholarly journals and books in social sciences, history, humanities, and science and mathematics, to their earliest issues. Many titles extend as far back as late 19th or early 20th centuries; most recent 3-5 years often not included. JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Periodicals Index Online
1665-1995. Index to 22 million articles from over 7,000 North American and European scholarly journals in arts, humanities, social sciences; 30 percent non-English language.
Project Muse: Scholarly Journals and Books Online
Search by subject or browse full text scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences and mathematics. More than 700 journals from over 250 university presses and scholarly publishers are available. Coverage begins 1906 or later, depending on the publication. UCSD also has access to over 30,000 book titles.
Web of Science
Indexes over 18,000 journals in all subjects (coverage back to 1900 for science and social science journals), as well as 80,000 books and more than 180K conference proceedings. Includes the popular "cited reference search" to identify papers which have cited a previously published work or author. Can also sort by "times cited" and find related articles based on commonly cited works.

Theatre and Dance: Getting Started with your Research

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Finding Theatre and Dance books

Finding published plays

Theatre and Dance Databases

Find articles in multidisciplinary resources

Current Theatre & Dance Journals