CAREER RESOURCES – ELECTRONIC RESEARCH RESOURCES

 

THEATRE RESOURCE COLLECTIONS AND DATABASES

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THEATRE COLLECTIONS

http://guides.hcl.harvard.edu/htc

The Harvard Theatre Collection was the first collection of its kind to be established in this country, and it stands as one of the largest performing arts collections in the world, the oldest theatre collection in the world of international significance. The Harvard Theatre Collection includes documentary material pertaining to the history of the performing arts, including the fields of theater, dance and ballet, and opera and musical theater.

http://www.intute.ac.uk/supportdocs/filmandtheatre.pdf
Internet Resources for Film and Theatre is a PDF file which provides details of some of the most useful Internet websites, covering all aspects of the film and theatre studies, including history; reviews; directors, screenwriters and playwrights; actors and acting; production; cinemas, film studios and theatres; festivals, awards and events; theory and criticism; and libraries, archives and collections. From the Intute: Arts and Humanities website: http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/

http://tla.library.unt.edu/
Includes a large list of theatre resources, as well as links to theatre libraries, archives and museums.

http://ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/collections/index.htm
Includes a variety of theatre and drama resources, including Shakespeare productions and French 17th and 18th century theatre.

http://www.theatresources.com
A complete guide to online theatre and dance resources.

http://via.lib.harvard.edu/via/deliver/advancedsearch?_collection=via
The Visual Information Access (VIA) system is a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard, focusing on artistic and cultural materials. VIA includes catalog records for objects or images owned, held or licensed by Harvard. Access to the catalog is open to the general public: all catalog records and thumbnail images are available to everyone. Access to higher resolution images is usually available to the Harvard community, is always determined by an individual repository, and is often dependent on copyright. Access to original object or image is determined by the individual repository. Restrictions on access may be noted in the VIA record.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60966199@N08/sets/72157626312413421/
The Ohio State University Libraries and the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute are excited to introduce a new digital collection – a set of photographs from OSU’s Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs: The images on the cabinet and tobacco cards in the collection open a window to the theatrical entertainment of burlesque of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as to exploration of feminine beauty, socially acceptable behavior, cross-dressing and gender issues, and exoticism. The collection is also archived in the Knowledge Bank, OSU’s institutional repository: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/47556

GENERAL SITES

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http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/

Global Performing Arts database. A database of digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and media objects.

http://www.hotreview.org/index.html
An online forum for critical writing about the theater with an emphasis on contemporary productions in New York City.

http://www.theatredatabase.com/
Theatre database on playwrights, plays, and related topics. Divided by era/century.

Merlot.org
Peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials.

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=001517412307533037157:avu1jnq1hhi
Google custom search . Includes over 380 sites.

http://www.theatredb.com/
Internet Theatre database. Database of professional theatre productions.

http://www.ltdb.co.uk/
London Theatre Database. Includes productions throughout the UK.

http://www.ibdb.com/index.php
Internet Broadway Database.

http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=en
A database of journals from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Most articles are in Spanish or Portuguese.

ARCHIVES AND SPECIALIZED SITES

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http://theater-historiography.org/

Ancient Here you’ll find a number of resources and scholarly conversations that we hope will be valuable to your research and pedagogy, whether you are a student, emerging, or established scholar. From the beginning, we and The University of Michigan Press have envisioned this space as a meeting ground for dynamic conversation about theatre history and how we go about practicing it in our classrooms and in our research and writing, as well as about the state of our field today. We’d also like this to be your space for the open exchange of practical ideas and tools.

http://www.whitman.edu/theatre/theatretour/home.htm
Ancient Theatre Archive at Whitman College. A virtual reality tour of Greek and Roman theatre architecture with images (some of which are panoramic) and specs of ancient theatres across Europe.

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/reed/
RRED: Records of Early English Drama. A database of performers, troupes, patrons, events, and venues in England and Wales before 1642.

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/bd/
A biographical index of English drama before 1660. Includes information on playwrights, actors, patrons, musicians, and other people active in English drama before 1660.

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/sta/index.html
Scottish Theatre Archive at the University of Glasgow.

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/index.htm
British Theatre Guide. A collection of interviews, articles, and reviews.

http://www.theatron.org/
Theatre History in Europe: Architectural and Textual Resources Online. Contains 3D models of theaters.

http://www.virtualvaudeville.com/
Includes 3D recreations of vaudeville performances and theaters.

http://www1.appstate.edu/orgs/spectacle/
A site devoted to the study of renaissance and baroque theatrical spectacle. Includes information on machinery, scenery and effects.

http://ubu.com/
Resources about the avant-garde tradition in the West.

http://www.inyerface-theatre.com/
A site about aggressive, confrontational theatre that developed in Britain in the 1990’s.

www.moliere-in-english.com and http://www.youtube.com/molierelover
All things concerning Moliere.

http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/
Everything you wanted to know about Arthur Lloyd.

http://www.iainfisher.com/kane.html
A site about Sarah Kane and her works.

http://alexanderstreet.com/products/drama.htm
The website of Alexander Street Press, which publishes theatre and performing arts databases. Also offers a streaming video database.

http://www.palatine.ac.uk/
Dance, drama and music resource.

http://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol6no2/childs.htm
A journal for ancient performance.

http://www.lib.pdx.edu/systems/interplay/
Drama search engine.

http://www.archive.org/details/texts
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Download free books and texts. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts and academic books. Try the archive’s site OpenLibrary for an interface to the published books on archive.org and links to other online book collections. This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text, many licensed using Creative Commons licenses.

http://www.archive.org/details/Lux02
Welcome to the Archive’s audio and MP3 library. This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/
Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Search for photographs, textual documents, illuminated manuscripts, maps, works of art, and books from the Beinecke’s collections. Some materials in this database may be protected by U.S. or international copyright laws or by privacy and publicity rights.

http://www.edmgr.com/sq/
Shakespeare Quarterly accepts submissions via the Editorial Manager manuscript tracking system. This program is designed to make our review process more efficient, and provides authors with a way to check the status of any papers submitted to the journal. Please note that as of April 2010, submissions are double blinded.

http://cardiffshakespeare.wordpress.com/shakespeare-and-theatre-related-journals-online/
Database of the Cardiff School of Shakespeare.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Archives

http://www.corbisimages.com/
Corbis Images is a creative resource for advertising, marketing and media professionals, providing a comprehensive selection of stock photography, illustration, footage, fonts, creative merchandise, and entertainment licensing and rights representation services.

http://www.gettyimages.com/
Getty Images is a leading provider of digital media worldwide, creating and distributing a range of assets – from royalty-free stock photography and editorial images to video, music and multimedia – that help communicators around the globe tell their stories.

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES AND VIDEOS:

Ordered by size of collection, largest first:

• Wikimedia Commons hosts only freely licensed images, sound files, and other media. With over 27 million uploaded files, (as of August 2015), it is the largest free “images-only” repository. It contains many public domain images. Commons is the primary repository of media for all Wikimedia projects. Media on Commons can be used readily on all Wikimedia projects, just as if the media were uploaded to the projects directly. Media tagged with the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark can be found here: commons:Category:CC-PD-Mark
• Stock Photos for Free Provided for free by GraphicStock. Registration required.
• Life of Pix Images from an advertising agency under the CC0 licence for realizing works into the public domain
• British Library Over a million images, taken mostly from illustrations in 17th, 18th and 19th Century books, released into the public domain, as announced on the British Library blog. Metadata about the images, and the books from which they come, is also available for download on Github.
• Pixabay – 350,000 public domain photos and cliparts, exclusively under Creative Commons CC0 – free for private and commercial use.
• LibreShot.com – No need to indicate the source / No registration / For commercial use. High-resolution photos in Martin Vorel’s photo blog. Photos from travelling (Mongolia, Thailand, Europe) and animals, plants and nature photos. All pictures are licensed under CC0 – Public domain.
• Gaderinge – A gathering of the best public domain images, free to download. No membership, no restrictions. Organized into many useful categories.
• PublicPhoto.Org – Over 26,000 unique photos with a resolution of up to 4752 x 3168 px free for private and commercial use.
• PD Photo – Large collection of mostly public domain photos. Read the license for each picture before use; also, model releases may not have been obtained for all photos.
• Photos Public Domain Thousands of high quality public domain photographs free for any use, with no restrictions. Collections included are: textures, animals, nature, and a variety of stock images for any use, including commercial.
• Pond5 Public Domain project 80.000 photos, videos and sound clips – free for private and commercial use
• Vintage.com – Thousands of vintage graphics, ephemera, and vintage advertisements that are in the public domain – free for private and commercial use.
• PDPics.com Public domain photo collection with about 7400 high resolution pictures up to 6000×4000. All images licensed under CC0 license.
• BestPhoto.us – about 2500 free photos in various categories.
• Pexels – more than 2,000 photos and all are under CC0 Licence, so that you can use them everywhere. Even in business-context. They committed to add 10 photos a day.
• Picdrome – growing Public Domain picture collection: no copyright, licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.
• Public-Domain-Photos.com
• 4 Free Photos Public domain images.
• Public Domain Files Public domain pictures and clip art.
• PD Poster Public domain posters.
• RepublicDomain.com is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers.
• Phototeria.com The site presents a collection of public domain images.
• clker – Easy to search public domain images, directly usable in openoffice.org
• thepublicdomain – public domain images from various sources in one-a-day blog format.
• Free Photos – Small personal photographic collection dedicated to the public domain.
• Public Domain Footage – Public domain archival stock footage and newsreels.
• Open Galleries A community source of free photography, hosting several galleries with photos from all over the world.
• The Public Domain Review – A Blog by the Open Knowledge Foundation to easily access public domain resources.
• Freetems – Public Domain images, graphics and more, free without registration.
• Public Domain Pictures A large collection of high quality pictures for free. Possibility to contact the authors for original files. (For some photo you have to be “premium membership” a.k.a. you have to pay !).
• FreeStockPhotos.biz A large collection of Public Domain, GNU, Creative Commons & custom licensed stock photos and clip art. (Beware, CC images is not Public Domain).
• Good Free Photos – All public domain pictures of mainly landscape but wildlife and plants as well
• 1 Million Free Pictures – All pictures covering various topics are released into public domain. These pictures are originally created by the owner therefore these pictures can be used for personal and commercial use.
• Pickupimage.com Large collection of high quality free stock photos and public domain pictures.
• Morguefile Free Stock Photos “Contains free high resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for either corporate or public use. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers and all creative pursuits.” Over 300,000 images.
• UnSplash.com Free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos. 10 new photos every 10 days.
• Topers Photos A collection of original and edited photos using various photo applications. These photos are dedicated by the creator into the public domain. It does not require credits but a backlink to the photo blog is appreciated.
• skitterphoto.com Daily added free to use and modify photographs, published under Creative Commons CC0 license (no rights reserved).
• duion.com Archive of pictures, mainly for texture-creation, all Images are under CC0 (Public Domain) license.
• creativecommons.photos Database for Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 licensed Photos.
• My Public Domain Pictures – A growing collection of amateur pictures released into public domain. You can use their pictures for any purpose and they do not require anything in return. Their collection includes travel pictures, pictures of animals and plants, background designs and many more being added everyday. They also include a collection of high resolution public domain pictures segregated according to topics including etchings of public domain pictures. The site also includes macro photography.
• Public Domain Media – Amateur photos released into public domain.
• PLiXS – free images – Thousand free public domain images.

US Government resources

• TotallyFreeImages.com – Totally free public-domain images – This is the largest archive on the Internet with more than 494,000 high-resolution, professional-grade, royalty-free images, 100% public-domain and acceptable for use with Wikipedia. (collection from government sources)
• The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries -search for images on government sites
• http://www.unclesamsphotos.com a detailed directory of the US government’s public domain image galleries
• http://www.archive.org/details/USGovernmentDocuments Government Documents scanned by the Internet Archive
• US National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection
• http://images.fws.gov/ – US Fish and Wildlife Service imagery
• images.google.com – use the advanced search feature to return images from the site or domain “.gov”. {{PD-USGov}} may apply to such images.
• http://images.usace.army.mil/main.html – United States Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library
• US Library of Congress digital image archive. (Some images are still under copyright, so caveat emptor.)
• http://nationalatlas.gov Lots of .GIF image maps, such as Congressional District maps, all in the public domain.
• US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service Photo Gallery
• US Antarctic Program Photo Library
• http://terraserver-usa.com/default.aspx – free public access to a vast data store of maps and aerial photographs of the United States originating from USGS. {{PD-USGov-USGS}} may apply to such images.
• http://visualsonline.cancer.gov/ -Great resource for electron microscopy and histological images. Includes general biomedical and science-related images, cancer-specific scientific and patient care-related images, and portraits of directors and staff of the National Cancer Institute.
• USDA Agriculture Research Service Image gallery A “complimentary source of high-quality digital photographs available from the Agricultural Research Service Information Staff”.
• US Census Bureau Photo Services – media “are free to use in news media and public information products” but are not in the public domain. Photo credit is requested, commercial use not allowed; see site for licence terms.
• http://www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/ – Current US Department of Defense publicly released image
• http://www.defenseimagery.mil/ (formerly http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/) – US Department of Defense Visual Information Center (high-resolution US military imagery; use with {{PD-USGov-Military-DVIC}} license template.)
• The Congressional Pictorial Directory – also available in book form.
• Department of the Navy – Naval Historical Center Photographic Section
• History of Medicine at the National Library of Medicine. Most but not all of the exhibitions are PD. Clicking on “Metadata” near the bottom of the page will generate a popup window with information that includes rights usage for each page.
• NOAA Photo Library
• http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov – Congressional sites have a broad variety of public domain images, especially photographs of representatives and senators.
• http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml – A portal to US government images and photos. “Most of these images and graphics are available for use in the public domain”
• USDA Online Photography Center
• MedPix Medical Image Database Hosting by Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. The terms of use of the site state that the original submitter may retain copyright. Nearly all of the submitters are US government physicians. The status of the submitter is available to verify that an individual image is in the public domain.
• Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
• Oakland Public Library. Not all are PD! The image detail page will state the status, PD images will be clearly marked “Public domain”.
• http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/public/public_domain.htm – Scanned and colorised etchings claimed to be PD images.

If any page or image seems missing, replace http://www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/compsci/dailey in its URI withhttp://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/

• http://content.lib.washington.edu/costumehistweb/index.html – This collection includes 417 fashion plates from 1806-1914 from some of the leading fashion journals of the time.
• Archives Library Information Center Includes many collections of photos from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Subject-based Collections

Ordered by subject, alphabetically:

Art

Note: Accurate photographs of two-dimensional visual artworks lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once the painting’s copyright has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.

• http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/
• http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ – The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) is an American art catalog compiled by the Smithsonian Institution. It has many reproductions of American paintings. However, it is known to have a number of factual errors, so it should be used with great care.
• http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artistindex.php – Images of the works of more than 2,600 realist painters, many in the public domain; check catalogue for dates of works and artists. Note: Accurate photographs of two-dimensional visual artworks lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once the painting’s copyright has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.
• http://www.thefamousartists.com – Growing resource with biographies and selected works of artists whose works are all in the public domain.
• http://www.getty.edu/art/ – 10000 images of Getty Museum^[4] There is also search page

Automotive

• The Crittenden Automotive Library. Not all are PD! The image detail page will state the status, PD images will be marked “Public domain” or by year of publication if before 1922.

Clip Art

Clip art, in the graphic arts, refers to pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Clip art is generally composed exclusively of illustrations (created by hand or by computer software), and does not include stock photography.

• http://www.wpclipart.com – exists to maintain and grow an online collection of artwork for schoolkids and others that is free of copyright concerns as well as safe from inappropriate images. To ensure these qualities, no direct user-uploaded images are allowed. This is one of the largest collections of public domain images online (clip art and photos), and the fastest-loading. Maintainer vets all images and promptly answers email inquiries.
• Open Clip Art – This project is an archive of public domain clip art. The clip art is stored in the W3C scalable vector graphics (SVG) format.
• Public Domain Clip Art– 25,000+ Public Domain Clip Arts (good for printing). Categorized & searchable.
• Public Domain Vectors– Categorized and searchable vector graphics in public domain
• Clip Art/Public Domain at DMOZ (a list of links to sites with public domain clip art)

Computer-generated

• http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/mapit/ – Automatic public domain map generating program
• PAT public domain maps: world, regional, country state (US, CA, AU)

History

• http://ushistoryimages.com – Public domain images from United States history.
• http://www.acliparthistory.com – Public Domain images of the History of the World. Also Natural History and Fancy letters suitable for school projects
• http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html Library of Congress American Memory site (Check copyright information for the separate items before deciding to use them!)
• http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngillus.htm Images from The Newgate Calendar. Mostly crimes and criminals from the 18th century. Also other works at http://www.exclassics.com
• http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ Collection images scanned from various old books that are now in the public domain. Searchable. Used to be under http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
• http://www.john-leech-archive.org.uk/ John Leech sketch archives 1841 until 1864 from Punch magazine The page states they are long out of copyright and that they are believed to be public domain.
• http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/ Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s online collection of digital images. Most will be {PD-art}. 90,000 images from rare books and manuscripts, search by keyword.
• http://digitalgallery.nypl.org New York Public Library. Over 700,000 images scanned from books. Including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more. There is a per-image usage fee even for public domain images.
• http://www.oldbookillustrations.com/ Images scanned from old books. States that images on the site are the works of artists who “…have been dead for over seventy years, which makes them part of the public domain in many countries”. Searchable by keywords.
• America As It Was – a huge resource for vintage postcards in the US, organized by state. Any postcard first published in the US before 1978 without an explicit copyright notice is PD. Lots of photos, aerial views, and maps of many US locations.
• “The Secret Museum of Mankind” – collection of anthropological photographs published in a 1935 book without copyright. Scanned and released under a CC-NC license, but images should be public domain, at least in the US, since they are faithful reproductions of PD images. (Warning: strong 1930’s racist P. O. V.)

Specific periods

• World War II Poster Collection over 300 posters issued by US Federal agencies
• Photos of the Great War many images of World War I, scanned in from public domain resources. Slight usage notice, which is probably compatible with GFDL (requires attribution and link, as does GFDL, requests e-mail notice of usage).
• The Heritage of the Great War has several colour pictures from World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
• World’s Armed Forces Forum (gallery for images taken from the French Ministry of Culture’s website) hosts more colour images of World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
• http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/ Child Labor in America 1908 – 1912 by Lewis W. Hine
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Thousands of on-line, copyright free photographs of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Great Depression and the New Deal, and World War II.

Literature

• http://archive.org – Scanned-in books, maps, manuscripts, and historical documents; Public Domain; available in a number of formats including epub, kindle, and daisy; Searchable.
• http://openlibrary.org – Project of the Internet Archive to provide a web page for every book.
• http://books.google.com – Scanned-in books & historical documents. Keyword searchable. Great source for diagrams/illustrations. (not all public domain, many still in copyright) Books google believes are in the public domain are available for download as pdf. seeBridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
• http://gutenberg.org – Scanned-in books. Searchable.
• http://catalog.hathitrust.org – Scanned-in books from partner universities. Searchable.
• http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ – Scanned-in books from partner Spanish universities. Searchable.

Logos and flags

• http://www.wpclipart.com/flags/index.html 436 flags, countries listed alphabetically, also US State flags, historical and others. All in PNG format.
• http://www.openclipart.org/
• https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html CIA World Factbook

Mexico

• PlayaDelCarmenMexico.org Public domain photos of Playa del Carmen.

Music

• FreePD.com – sells original public domain music
• The Mutopia Project – (not only) public domain sheet music

New Zealand

• Free New Zealand Photos Free photos of New Zealand under Creative Common license.

Religion

• http://www.theworkofgodschildren.org Collection of high-resolution images of the Roman Catholic saints, religious symbols and related imagery. All pictures have been released into the public domain.
• http://www.coolnotions.com/PDImages/pd_StoryOfTheBible.htm Collection of Public Domain pictures from the Bible.

United States

Florida

• Florida Memory Project Contains Public Domain images taken in Florida.
• Florida Historical Society Contains historical photographs of Florida.
• State of Florida Library Contains many photographs and documents dealing with Florida.

Search Engines

• Wayback Machine Search 150 Billion web pages preserved by the Internet Archive.
• Google Image Search – Advanced search can search for free licensed or PD works By default, Google does not filter based on license. Add the following (without quotes) to your search URL to display only images with licensing appropriate for Wikipedia: “&tbs=sur:fmc”
• everystockphoto.com – Searching over 4.3 million public domain and creative commons photos including Wikipedia and NASA. Free user accounts with drag and drop collections, and other features.
• PicFindr.com – Searches a hand picked collection of public domain-, free stock photo-, and photo community sites. Includes the ability to search by rights! (whether you need to give credit, ask permission or not)
• StockBlend.com – Lets you search and browse through multiple Stock agencies.
• Bing.com – Has an Advanced Image Search, that offers images in different resolutions and also categorizes images. Allows free querying of the bing Image Search API up to a certain limit per day.