Dramatic Art Collections

Collecting Goals	General Collections	Special Collections	Other Web Sites
Reference Collections	Media Collections	Related Collections	Library Contacts
Electronic Collections	Microform Collections	UNC Web Sites	Faculty Library Liaison

Collecting Goals:

The Dramatic Art collections support teaching and research at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Department of Dramatic Art and in other departments and programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They also serve as a resource for the people of the State. The collections offer thousands of titles in the fields the Department emphasizes: theater performance, costume production, and technical production.

Reference Sources:

The Library has an extensive collection of reference materials in all formats to support the study of Dramatic Art. Major indexing and abstracting tools are available online, notably ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature) Plus Full Text via Chadwyck-Healey's LiteratureOnline, and the MLA International Bibliography Plus Full Text via Chadwyck-Healey's LiteratureOnline. Printed works are located primarily in the Reference Department of Davis Library. E-Reference materials are a good place to begin the study of Dramatic Art, while research guides and tutorials facilitate exploration in depth in selected areas. For further information about reference materials or help using them, please consult the Reference staff.

Electronic Collections:

The Library offers remote access to hundreds of thousands of titles that are important to the study of Dramatic Art. They include Early English Books Online(EEBO) and The Eighteenth Century Collection Online(ECCO), which collectively cover 250,000 works published in the British Isles between 1475 and 1800. Early American Imprints I (EVANS) and II (Shaw-Shoemaker) contain 75,000 items published in North America between 1639 and 1819. The Literature Online (LION) databases provide access to more than 260,000 fully searchable texts, some major reference tools, secondary sources, biographies, bibliographies, and a master index of web sites selected for their quality and range of literary materials. Particulary noteworthy for Dramatic Art are American Drama, Black Drama, Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare (1591-1911), and English Drama (1280-1915). The Literature Resource Center offers a wealth of critical and biographical information about more than 120,000 authors from the Classical period to the present. It provides several hundred thousand full-text journal articles and other critical essays, thousands of plot summaries and links to authoritative Web sites, over 100,000 author biographies, several thousand author portraits, and the Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Information about electronic journals related to the study of Dramatic Art can be found on a collected list. However, the best way to find information about individual electronic serials is to enter a title search on the Library's "E-Journal Finder" web page. For further information about these titles, please consult the Reference Department. To request a title, please contact the Humanities Bibliographer.

General Collections:

Because the Department of Dramatic Art is the second-oldest university drama department in the country, and the library collections have been built over many years, the holdings contain an exceptionally rich array of plays published in English and other languages. Currently, the Library acquires most of the publications by the major drama publishers of North America and the British Isles, especially Dramatist Play Service, French, and Methuen. In addition, the collections include titles about staging, lighting, and other aspects of production. The Library also has a heavily used collection of books on costume and costume design. To complement its holdings of titles on acting, the collections include autobiographies and biographies of directors, actors and playwrights; histories of theater; and critical studies of plays, especially those from North America, the British Isles, western Europe, and Latin America. A list of current print subscriptions in the discipline is available. For further information or to request a title, please consult the Humanities Bibliographer.

Media Collections

The Media Resources Center contains more than 12,000 film titles, hundreds of screenplays, popular music, and audio books. It also has video and audio performances of plays and videos of master classes. For further information about this collection, please consult the Media Resources Librarian

Microform Collections:

The library has a large collection of microforms related to theater that supplement the Library's book holdings in dramatic art. They include Three Centuries of Drama: English Drama, 1500-1880 and Three Centuries of Drama. American, 1741-1830. For further information about these titles, please consult the Reference staff. To request a title, please consult the Humanities Bibliographer.

Special Collections:

The Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library has several collections that support the study of Dramatic Art. Most notable among them are copies of the second, third, and fourth Folios of William Shakespeare; the Henderson Collection of George Bernard Shaw, one of the world's largest collections of Shaw; the American Theater Collection of clippings, programs, photographs, special articles, books, and autographs relating to the American theater from 1881 to 1931; and the Whitaker Collection of Costume Plates in Books. For further information, please consult the staff of the Rare Book Collection. The North Carolina Collection has printed plays written by North Carolina authors over the past four centuries. For further information, please consult the Curator of the North Carolina Collection.The Manuscripts Department contains manuscripts of plays written by authors with North Carolina ties, including Paul Green. There are also some manuscripts by other authors, notably George Bernard Shaw. For further information, please contact the Manuscripts Department.

Related Collections:

Collections in English and American literature the other literatures of the world, Art, and Music extend library holdings related to Dramatic Art. Perkins Library, at Duke University, also holds a significant number of plays. Users can therefore expect to find most of the titles they need in the area. The Center for Research Libraries supplements these holdings with specialized microform collections of plays. UNC faculty and students can request unlimited amounts of materials from CRL, via the web and keep them indefinitely, or until another person needs them. For further information, please consult the Humanities Bibliographer.