Research Guides: Dance Education: Primary Sources

What are Primary Sources?

Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied.

A primary source (also called original source) is a:

document,
recording,
artifact,
or other source of information that was created at the time under study, usually by a source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described.

It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions are used in library science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources, though the distinction is not a sharp one.

NYU Special Collections

Visit Bobst Library Special Collections on the 2nd fl. of Bobst.

NYU Archival Collections
NYU Libraries’ special collections and archives house significant resources, rare books, personal papers, University history, and more. Additionally, they sponsor numerous events throughout the year and contribute widely to many publications.

Locating Archives & Manuscripts

New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts
Collections can range in size from a single letter or diary to thousands of boxes of institutional records. They can contain drafts of literary works, financial records, meeting minutes, reports, memorabilia, as well as sound recordings, videos, film, databases, and software.
ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid is a listing of archival collections across the world. Users can search nearly a million collection descriptions from thousands of libraries, museums, and archives. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.

Select Digital Archival Collections

An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920
A collection of over 200 digitized "social dance" manuals housed at the Library of Congress.
Dance Heritage Video Archive (DHVA)
Continuing the work begun by the Dance Heritage Coalition’s Dance Preservation and Digitization Project, this digital collection maintained by USC Libraries preserves culturally significant recordings that document global and U.S. dance traditions, creative work by outstanding choreographers and performers, and performances that helped to advance the art form.
Dance Oral History Project
A distinct collection of interviews that have been initiated and recorded by the New York Public Library in an effort to add to the existing primary-source material available to researchers in dance.
Jacob’s Pillow Archive
Discover the rich history of Jacob’s Pillow through an extensive online collection of photographs and festival programs. Search our entire collection of moving images, books, correspondence and other materials to learn more about past performances and artists.
Merce Cunningham Trust
Preserves the recorded and physical works of Merce Cunningham and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, including the full text of his writings and dance capsules of his works.
Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Archive
A digital photograph collection designed to make the history of 20th-century Chinese dance accessible to international researchers. The project was started at the University of Michigan Asia Library in 2014, with support from the Center for World Performance Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.

Current Dance Reviews

ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
To locate dance reviews: in most cases entering title name of the artist or name of the performance plus the word REVIEWS will be enough to retrieve the reviews.
International Bibliography of Theater & Dance with Full Text This link opens in a new window
contains citations and full-text to journal articles, books, book articles and dissertation abstracts on all aspects of theatre and performance. IBTD is a multicultural and inter-disciplinary research tool for theater students, educators and professionals.

To Search: enter the name of the play in quotes and select document type entertainment review.
OmniFile Full Text Mega This link opens in a new window
OmniFile Full Text Mega is a Multi-disciplinary database providing the complete content - indexing, abstracts, and full text - from six collections: Education Full Text, General Science Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Readers' Guide Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text, and Wilson Business Full Text. Dates of coverage: 1982 to present.
Readers' Guide Full Text Mega This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing and abstracting of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and Canada, plus the full text of selected periodicals. Dates of coverage: 1983 to present.
Readers' Guide Retrospective (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America.Dates of coverage: 1890-1982. Use the Readers' Guide Full Text for 1983 forward.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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In addition to indexing more than 400 magazines and journals, LexisNexis Academic is a news database that provides full text news stories from more than 350 international, national, and regional newspapers published between the late 1970s and the present. To Search: enter the name of the dance/Choreographer/artist in quotes AND theatre AND reviews. Specify date and what publications you wish to search.
Please clear your browser's cache and cookies before attempting to access this resource.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
a performing arts journal resource with over 492,000 indexed articles, plus detailed abstracts and full text from 1864 to the present, covering theatre, dance and film.

To Search: go to Search Articles, enter the play title in quotes, select Broad subject (select from the list) Theatre Productions.
Art and Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
Art & Architecture Source is an essential research database for peer-reviewed, full-text art and architecture journals with coverage dating back to 1914. Subjects include fine, decorative, and commercial art, as well as architecture, landscape, urban planning, and architectural design. With strong international coverage, including periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines, and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts, and thousands of images. It also includes the contents of Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984), formerly called Art Source.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) This link opens in a new window
provides access to current and retrospective bibliographic information and cited references found in nearly 1,130 of the world's leading arts & humanities journals.

Historical Newspaper Reviews

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Full-text and full-image articles from one of the country's leading newspapers, clear back to the mid-nineteenth century. Use front pages, articles, editorials, photos, advertisements, wedding and engagement announcements, cartoons, birth and death announcements, reviews, and more, to peek into the daily lives of ordinary people, as well as to witness major events from the past such as Reconstruction after the Civil War, American industrialization into the 20th Century, World Wars I & II, the Civil Rights Movement, and so forth.

To search: The historical newspapers will be far down the list at the end and highlighted in yellow.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains digital copies of articles from about 1,000 American newspapers from all the current 50 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1900, with strongest coverage of the first half of the 19th century.
Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window
Provides the full text of The Times of London newspaper from 1785-1985.

For current articles (1985-present) from The Times of London see Academic (Lexis-Nexis).
American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century, 1740-1940.
Eight Centuries This link opens in a new window
Searches numerous indexes and web-based resources from 1106 until 1930 CE. It provides references and links out to periodicals, books, artworks, and government documents (US and UK). These cover all subject areas.
Some resources identified in this database may not be available directly but we could have access through another vendor. Please contact the library in those cases.
New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Contains tens of millions of searchable newspaper pages, dating as far back as the 1700s.
Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.
Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. 1801-1819
NewsBank This link opens in a new window
Newsbank searches a collection of databases from the information vendor Newsbank, including the Archive of Americana, World News Archive, Foreign Broadcast Information Service Reports, and Access World News. These collections include: Early American Newspapers, Series XV, 1822-1879: Immigrant Communities; American Underworld: The Flash Press; African American Newspapers, Series 1, African American Newspapers, Series 2, Ethnic American Newspapers (Balch), 1799-1971; Joint Publications Research Service Reports (JPRS), 1957-1995; Sowetan Collection; Financial Mail Collection, Sunday Times Collection; Business Day Collection

Historical Databases Covering a Variety of Time Periods

Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
18th & 19th century. A collection of databases containing full-text versions of historical books, periodicals, and other documents pertaining to American history before 1900.
Shakespeare Collection This link opens in a new window
The collection contains the complete series of Arden Shakespeare texts, 29 quartos, the First Folio, 17th - 19th Century editions and adaptations, 200 prompt books, over 500 performance accounts by Gordon Crosse, 400 performance-related biographies, 70-100 full text-journals, reference works, images and illustrations.
Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: 1685-1815
Newspapers and periodicals printed from 1685 to 1815 which cover all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Material comes from the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, one of the finest surviving collections of eighteenth-century periodicals and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The titles chosen for this project have been screened carefully against EEBO, Early English Newspapers and ECCO so that there is minimal overlap.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
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Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, the Schomburg Studies, and much more. It combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), historical black newspapers, and the Black Literature Index.
Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
major online periodical archive that makes the backfiles of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the full text of a growing number of digitized periodicals that have been indexed in its sister database, Periodicals Index Online.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of African Americans, as well as the greater Black Diaspora. Features access to full-text content from more than 400 titles, 3,000 slave narratives, over 2000 images, 5,000 primary sources, and 250 vetted Web sites.

Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
1861-1865. knits together more than 1,000 sources of diaries, letters, and memoirs to provide fast access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war, including what was happening at home.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
1500-1900. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
1800-1950. provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
will include approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950, plus 4,000 pages of previously unpublished materials. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. More than 1,500 biographies will enhance the use of the database.

The National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.