LibGuides: Theatre: Finding Books & Ebooks

What are books good for?

Besides being "super-great-things-to escape-inside-by-reading-them", books can help you with research. Some books contain criticisms and essays by multiple authors, much like journals contain articles. And once you've found a book that is relevant, check out the bibliography (usually in the back of the book or at the end of chapters) for citations the author used to write the book. These can lead you to more relevant sources, in books, and in journals. Browsing a general topic book can also help you narrow your topic to something more specific, or give you ideas for completely different topics or papers.

Try these Ebook Collections

EBook Central (formerly Ebrary) This link opens in a new window
Full text books on a variety of topics
Ebrary is a multidisciplinary collection of over 70,000 electronic books from a variety of top academic publishers. Content can be accessed and viewed from any computer/browser, and there is no limit on simultaneous users. Most of the books in Ebrary have been published since 2004, making this collection very up-to-date. New titles are added monthly. Subjects covered include: Anthropology, Business & Economics, Computers & IT, Education, Engineering & Technology, Fine Arts, History, Political Science, Law, International Relations, Public Policy, Language, Literature, Linguistics, Life Sciences, Medicine, Humanities, Nursing & Allied Health, Physical Sciences, Psychology, Social Work, Sociology, Religion, Philosophy, and the Classics. Ebrary lets you highlight and annotate passages as well as save your annotated books to a personal "Bookshelf" for easy access later. You can organize your Bookshelf into folders, and you can share any of your folders with UIndy colleagues or students. You can copy the direct link to an individual e-book and paste into your syllabus, list of readings, or other documents. The books in Ebrary can be downloaded to your computer and mobile devices, so you can read them offline. There are two choices: Create an image PDF of a specific chapter or page range Same page limits as for printing - up to 60 pages Accessible on most computers and devices Additional (free) software is typically not needed No "check-out" period -- Files do not expire Download an entire document as an e-book in Adobe Digital Editions Up to 10 documents at a time per patron Before your first download, you will need to install Adobe Digital Editions (free online). To be able to use your downloaded book on more than one device, you will need to create an Adobe ID/password, which just takes a minute. Accessible on most computers and devices. Check-out period for downloaded e-book: 14 days Instructions for downloading are available on the Ebrary site at http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uindy/help.action (choose Document Downloading from the left-hand menu).
Ebsco eBook Collection This link opens in a new window
Full text books on a variety of topics
This collection includes approximately 17,000 electronic books that may be read online using any computer. Although the books are not downloadable, you may print or e-mail up to 60 pages of most titles, so that you can read your selected material offline. Each book is accessible to one person at a time, for the length of his or her online session. (Sessions automatically time out after 30 minutes of inactivity, releasing the book for other users.) You may record electronic notes as you read your selection and save your notes in a personal EBSCO folder. You can search for appropriate books by keyword or by category, and each individual book can be searched by keyword.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Selected humanities and sciences journals
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. The journals archived in JSTOR span many disciplines in the humanities, arts, sciences, business, and social sciences.
Oxford Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window

Online Reference Books

Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Full text of over 70 reference books on a variety of topics
Full-text of over 70 reference books on a broad variety of topics, including multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, business plan handbooks, company history compilations, consumer health references, and specialized reference sources. Subjects covered include arts and humanities, biography and genealogy, business and industries, general and consumer interests, government and political science, health and medicine, law, science and technology, and social sciences. These types of reference materials once were accessible only in the library, but now you can access them online 24/7. Users can search across the entire collection, limit the search by subject area, or just search an individual source. Available sources are listed in the Title List on the main page.
Oxford Reference Online Premium This link opens in a new window
Oxford Reference Online Premium
Oxford Reference Online Premium is an outstanding collection of 198 language and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press, including Oxford Companions, Dictionaries, and Encyclopedias, cross-searchable and covering a full array of subjects from Art to Zoology. For additional information, please refer to the publisher’s website.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Designed so that each entry in the field of Philosophy is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. Maintained by Stanford University.
Internet Sacred Texts Archive
This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language.

Browsing for Books on Religion and Philosophy in KML

Books are shelved according to the Dewey Decimal System. All of our books can be found in the Basement of the library, accessed either by the elevator or the main front stairwell.

Here are some suggested Dewey Decimal areas for browsing the library’s shelves for books on Theatre:

391 Costume/Fashion

792 Theatre (performance)

808.8245 Monologues

812 American Plays and Criticisms

822 British Plays and Criticisms

822.33 Shakespeare

Full text plays

In addition to the e-book databases in the box above, the following will link you to sites that contain full length plays:

ProPlay - the premiere site for online, professionally produced stage plays, which you can read right now, free of charge. In most cases, the playwright has chosen to have the entire script posted. In all cases, substantial portions of the play may be read now, for free.
Playscripts Inc. - Playscripts, Inc. brings new plays and musical to professional, school, community, and college theaters to perform, read and enjoy. You can find full length plays to read, and pricing if you choose to mount the production.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993. The HTML versions of the plays provided are placed in the public domain. Hosted by MIT.
Project Gutenberg - offers over 54,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. This link will take you to the Plays bookshelf, with full text of public domain plays.

Theatre

Search

What are books good for?

Try these Ebook Collections

Online Reference Books

Browsing for Books on Religion and Philosophy in KML

Full text plays

Popular Reading Collection