Research Guides: Arts &amp; Humanities LibGuide Template: Find Primary Sources

Recommended Primary Sources

[Use the Primary Sources tab to include general primary source resources and specific databases that would be most suited to the subject. As an example, this template currently has a link to the general, interdisciplinary Primary Source Collections guide that organizes most of the primary source databases UMBC subscribes to. There are also links to comprehensive searching of primary sources by platform, such as ProQuest and Alexander Street. The last box gives examples of including Theatre specific primary source databases and links.]

Primary Source Collections
This resource links out to the Primary Source Collections research guide that consolidates and organizes the databases and collections that are accessible to UMBC faculty, staff, and students. The resources are organized by time period, geographic region, source type, and topic.

Recommended Primary Source Databases

Proquest Comprehensive Search
Provides menu of all Proquest resources, click on the ones desired for cross-searching.
Proquest/Alexander Street Comprehensive Search
Provides a cross-searching tool for the theatre, drama, and mixed media collections.

Archives Unbound (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research needs of researchers, and students at the college and university level. The multi-disciplinary resource, collections cover topics from the Middle Ages to the twentieth-century. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is a premier online research platform that provides more than 201 million pages of multidisciplinary periodicals, essential government documents, international resources, case law, and much more.

Recommended Primary Source Collections for Theatre

Theatre and Drama Premium (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Theatre and Drama Premium provides access to all the subscribed Alexander St. databases in a cross-searchable format. Individual collections may be listed separately for better focus in searching. Collections include Black Drama, Asian American Drama, Drama Texts, and many others. Resources include playscripts, filmed stage performances, images, interviews, training materials.
American Drama 1714–1915 (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
American Drama contains more than 1,500 dramatic works from the early eighteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth, reflects Ameican dramatic writing in all its richness and diversity: plays in verse, farces, melodramas, minstrel shows, realist plays, frontier plays, temperance dialogues and a range of other genres are represented.
Black Drama- Third Edition (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Black Drama, now in its expanded third edition, contains the full text of more than 1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
Contemporary World Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.

Federal Theatre Project, Library of Congress
"This online presentation includes items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. The Federal Theatre Project was the largest and most ambitious effort mounted by the Federal Government to organize and produce theater events. It was an effort of the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to provide work for unemployed professionals in the theater during the Great Depression which followed the stock market crash of October 1929."

Arts & Humanities LibGuide Template

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