Library Guides: Acting and Theatre: Find Journal Articles

Develop your search terms

Do you know which search terms to use to find great articles on your topic?
Experiment with your keywords in one of these broad search options before diving into more specialised search locations.

Discovery searches across a large number of databases. Use Advanced Search and subject filters for the best results.
Proquest Central is similar to Discovery, searching across multiple databases
Google Scholar is a convenient search tool, but you'll need to set up Find it @ Unimelb links to effectively use Google Scholar for library research.

Once you've found a few good resources, explore some subject-specific databases and journals.

Why are there so many places to search?

Visit the Comparing Search Pathways guide for a quick explainer.

Acting and Theatre databases

Performing Arts Database (Proquest)
This database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 260 international periodicals, plus full text for more than 100 of the indexed journals. IIPA covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television and more.
MLA International Bibliography (EBSCOhost)
Produced by the Modern Language Association the International Bibliography is the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore and film, covering scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present. It includes citations to content published in journals, books, series, translations, scholarly editions, websites and dissertations. The database also includes the Directory of Periodicals and the Thesaurus.
Oxford Reference
Oxford Reference is the home of Oxford’s quality reference publishing. The collection provides quality, up-to-date reference content at the click of a button. The University of Melbourne subscribes to selected titles from this large collection of materials.
Social Theory
Social Theory offers documents that explore the complexities and interpret the nature of social behavior and organization. Includes major theorists such as Theodor Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Robert Merton, Dorothy E. Smith, and Talcott Parsons.
TVNews (Informit)
TVNews indexes Australian television news, current affairs and selected documentaries from the free-to-air networks with links to the digitised video content in a compressed format. All individual stories from a particular broadcast are indexed with a detailed synopsis. TVNews is updated daily, with stories appearing on an evening news broadcast generally being available for access the next morning. Key titles include: Australian Story, Catalyst, Current Affair, Dateline, Foreign Correspondent, Four Corners, Insiders, Insight, Landline, Lateline, Meet the Press, Q and A, Today Tonight, World News Australia, and many more. Coverage commences with September 2007 and is updated daily.

Theatre in Context Collection
Theatre in Context, previously titled North American Theatre Online, is a comprehensive reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to approximately 30,000 plays, 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies. The collection also includes approximately 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.

SPORTDiscus with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
SPORTDiscus is the most comprehensive, bibliographic database covering sport, physical fitness, exercise, sports medicine, sports science, physical education, kinesiology, coaching, training, sport administration, officiating, sport law & legislation, college & university sport, disabled persons, facility design & management, intramural & school sport, doping, health, health education, biomechanics, movement science, injury prevention rehabilitation, physical therapy, nutrition, exercise physiology, sport & exercise psychology, recreation, leisure studies, tourism, allied health, occupational health & therapy, public health and more. SPORTDiscus is provided by the Sport Information Resource Centre.

Use the site or domain limiter in Google Advanced Search to quickly find information on websites and online publications.

For example:

Limit search results to only show results from e-flux by including site:e-flux.com or Frieze using site:frieze.com in your search.

Searching effectively with Google

Video Streaming databases

Kanopy (Kanopy)
The Kanopy Streaming Service is the leading supplier of streamed videos to global academic institutions. The service utilises sophisticated platform and delivery technology to offer a new world of online engagement that empowers University of Melbourne Library to stream on demand video at optimal quality to their registered staff and students.

Explore the catalogue of over 20,000 videos from the world’s most prominent filmmakers and production houses. Specially curated collections cover a wide range educational disciplines including literacy, mathematics, history and issues in society. Kanopy also offers a hosting service allowing for DVDs to be uploaded and streamed online provided digital rights is obtained. Kanopy offers a large range of Australian content and videos can be searched using the library catalogue.
Digital Theatre Plus
Digital Theatre+ collaborates with with world-class theatre companies, industry associations, practitioners and scholars to provide access to a growing collection of full-length theatre productions and educational resources. The database contains recordings of hundreds of live captured performances across theatre, ballet, opera and classical music; interviews with actors, directors, and backstage crew providing an often unseen insight into the workings of a theatre and what it takes to stage a play; study guides accompanying curricula mapped plays, written by leading academics to help students get to grip with dramatic texts; relationship maps, plot summaries, theme and context analysis, glossaries and much, much more.
Theatre in Video
Theatre in Video contains more than 250 definitive performances of the world's leading plays, together with more than 100 film documentaries, online in streaming video - more than 500 hours in all. This release contains 279 titles, representing hundreds of leading playwrights, actors and directors. The collection aims to begin in the 1930s and will progress through the 20th century with videos covering the work of the Group Theater and Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. Performances from the 40s and 50s will cover works by William Saroyan, Thornton Wilder, Maxwell Anderson etc.

More video streaming databases can be found in the Video Streaming & DVDs tab in this guide

Script and Play databases

American Film Scripts Online (Alexander Street Press)
American Film Scripts Online contains 1,009 scripts by 1,062 writers together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimilie images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Most of the scripts have never been published before, and nowhere else are they available online.
Australian Plays Transform
AustralianPlays.org offers the combined catalogues of Australia's leading theatrical publishers together in one place. Provided are free extracts of scripts where available and access to the full text of over 1200 titles.
Drama Online
Drama Online is a digital library of the most studied, performed and critically acclaimed plays from the last 2,500 years. Developed in partnership by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and Faber and Faber Ltd, Drama Online features the pre-eminent drama titles from the Methuen Drama, Arden Shakespeare and Faber lists. The collection contains the works of Aeschylus to works of the present day.

More play, film and TV script databases can be found in the Finding Scripts tab in this guide

Multidisciplinary databases

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)
Academic Search™ Complete is a multidisciplinary full-text database, providing access to more than 8,600 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,500 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text it offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Anthropology Online (Alexander Street Press)
Alexander Street Anthropology brings together a wide range of streaming video, written ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behavior the world over. Essential for study in the areas of politics, economics, history, psychology, environmental studies, religion, area studies, linguistics, and geography, the database will contain more than 1,800 documentary films and over 100,000 pages of full-text material at completion, including tens of thousands of pages of previously unpublished material from major archives.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a digital library of thousands of academic journals, books, and primary sources from a wide range academic publishers and university presses. Titles span across disciplines, including core areas such as business & economics, social sciences, education, history, language & literature and science. Current journals are linked and cross-searchable with archival journals and ebooks on JSTOR, helping patrons discover, use, and build upon a constantly expanding range of academic content.

ArtsHub & ScreenHub

ArtsHub
The Library's institutional subscription does not give access to all functions on the ArtsHub site. Library users cannot upload a resume or curriculum vitae or cover letter to use when submitting job applications from within ArtsHub. These features are restricted to personal subscribers.
ScreenHub
Screen Hub is the daily email News and Jobs service for people working in the Australian film and television industries.

Article Requests

Article requests

Found an article that looks great, but can't find it online?

Check if we have the article in print by searching for the journal title in the library catalogue
If we have the journal at another campus, submit an Intercampus Copying Request for a PDF scan
If you can't find the journal in our collection at all, request a PDF copy of the article with Inter-library Loans
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