The People's Chronology: a Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. James Trager.
Ref. D11 .T83 1994

The Timetables of History : A Historical Linkage of People and Events. Bernard Grun.
Ref. [q.] D11 .G78 2005

Literary Studies

Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. Bruce Murphy, ed.
Ref. PN41 .B4 1996

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Ivor H. Evans.
Ref. PN43 .B65 2005

Literature Resource Center.
Use the Author search or the Advanced search. Provides personal data, career highlights, lists of writings, and works in progress on authors. The individuals included range from newspaper and television reporters to editors and columnists to novelists, screenwriters, and literary theorists. In addition to biographical information, includes material from the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, and Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, and more.

The Harper Handbook to Literature. Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker, George Perkins ; with a chronology of literature and world events by Barbara M. Perkins.
Ref. PN41 .F75 1985

Theater Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Martin Banham, ed.
Ref. PN2035 .C27 1995

The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre. Colin Chambers, ed.
Ref. PN2035 .C65 2002

Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis.
Ref. PN 2035 .P2913 1998

Theatre Language; A Dictionary of Terms in English of the Drama and Stage from Medieval to Modern Times. Walter Parker Bowman and Robert Hamilton Ball.
Ref. PN2035 .B6

The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre. 6 vols.
Ref. PN1861 .W67 2001 v. 1-6

In addition to the sources listed here, be sure to look at the section of this guide on Articles. National newspapers such as the New York Times are excellent sources for reviews, as are the popular periodicals listed in Poole's Index to Periodical Literature and Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Also, be sure to search the library's online catalog for the author's name (last name first) as a Subject; you will find criticism and interpretation of the author's works.

LexisNexis Academic
Various dates; the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times have indexing back to 1980, with full text added at later dates. Other papers are added dating mostly from the mid 1990's.

New York Theatre Critics Reviews. Microfilm, 1940-1957
New York Theatre Critics Reviews. Bound, 1970-1994
National Theatre Critics Reviews. Bound, 1995-1996
The library owns scattered issues of these publications, in print and on microfilm. Publication ceased in 1996.
Microform Area
Periodicals Level A

New York Times. 1851-current.
Considered to be the American paper of record. The New York Times is on microfilm and on the web.
New York Times Index--Reference Indexes/Microform Area
New York Times (1851-2006)
Current issues available from many sources: see FindIt

Times (London, England).
The leading British paper. The Times itself is available online and on microfilm.
Times Digital Archive (1785-1985)
Current issues available from many sources: see FindIt
Times index--Reference Indexes/Microform Area

Newspaper Source Plus
Provides indexing and selected full text for newspapers. Dates for backfiles vary by title. In addition, the database features more than 601,300 television and radio news transcripts, videos & podcasts.

The World Wide Web is another good source of reviews, especially for smaller companies whose productions might not be reviewed in the larger newspapers. See the information below on Web Resources for more help.

To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try Title begins with, Author, Subject begins with or Keyword Anywhere searching.

Title begins with
These searches will let you see if we own an item whose title you already know.

Author
You can search the name of a playwright as an author to find works by the person named. Be sure to enter the last name first.

Subject begins with
Search the name of a writer as a subject to find works about the person's life and plays. Be sure to enter the last name first. You can also look for terms like drama. You will be referred to more subject headings. Be specific; there's a lot out there on drama. You can also use the Library of Congress Subject Headings for ideas on subject search terms; the five volume LCSH in print is located behind the Reference Desk on the library's first floor.

You should be aware that the Library of Congress Subject Headings use the spelling theater for general information: theatre is used when it is part of the proper name of a particular theatre, for example, Federal Theatre Project. Also important are these subheadings:

• dramatic production
• stage history

Keyword Anywhere
In this search, LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase, like "stage history" using quotation marks. You can search for individual terms connected by logical operators like AND or OR. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH. You can also search for multiple forms of words by using an asterisk; try a search like this one for theat* and history. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with theat; theatre, theater, theatrical, and so on. You can target your search even more effectively by telling LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records; compare the Keyword Anywhere search with the Subject Keyword search.

Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system which organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.

Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.

The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. Some of our indexes include:

Academic Search Premier.
Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals, and includes some full text.

Gale Academic OneFile
Broad coverage of academic periodicals going back to 1980. Includes full text of some articles.

MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
The leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.

See also the sources listed above under Reviews of Productions for more newspaper articles.

Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try using the button or Citation Linker to see if that particular article is available. If you don't find it, you can submit a request for interlibrary loan (ILL) of a copy of the article: ILL takes about 7-10 days, so plan ahead. See the library's Interlibrary Loan page for more information.

CurtainUp
"The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings."

Doollee.com
"...information on over 30,000 Plays produced or published in English since 1956..."

Internet Resources for Theatre and Drama
Links selected by the librarians of Mudd.

Lawrence University: Theatre Arts Department
The official site.

Voice of the Shuttle.
One of the most widely used sources for information on the humanities and literatures.

Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:

• Scout Report and the Scout Report Archives
• Infomine
• Librarian's Internet Index

It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources. The library's Web Wise Guide to Searching give some helpful inside tips. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.

Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003

Remember that there are two acceptable English spellings, theatre and theater and that you may need to keep an eye out for both terms in your research. Material related to the topic of this course will be drawn from many fields: be prepared to look at materials from fields like history, gender studies, literature, just to name a few. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.

Your sources must be fully documented in any written work you produce. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the required documentation at hand when you need it. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.

The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Direct links are provided to Internet resources and searchable databases, as well as links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at guides on related topics from the Library Research Guides page.

Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.

Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and scores; at end of classes in other collections