Research Guides: Design for Stage and Film: Primary Sources

Definition

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the truth of what actually happened during an historical event or time period. "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.

Locate and Access Archives

NYU Archival Collections
Bobst Library's 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.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Explore 901,813 items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections, including the Billy Rose Theatre Collection and jJerome Robbins Dance Division.
New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts
On this site, you can search The New York Public Library's vast holdings, initiate a research visit, submit a query to an archivist, and access digitized material. Most Broadway shows can be viewed in the special collections. You will need a NYPL library card to view them.
Playbill
Use the search feature to locate information and images from historical and current performances.
Museum of the City of New York
The Theater Collection at the Museum of the City of New York contains over 200,000 accessioned objects that document theatrical performance in New York City from 1785 to present day Broadway productions. The Collection contains a wide range of material types such as annotated scripts, articles, contracts, correspondence, design renderings, drawings, ephemera, memorabilia, photographs, personal papers, posters, prints, props, scores, sheet music, scrapbooks, window cards, 3-D objects, and architectural elements.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Explore digital collections from the Leonard Bernstein collection to the Federal Theatre Collection.
Digital Collections in Performing Arts
The internet is awash in digital content documenting the global history of performance. Finding the often siloed collections can be a challenge, but the resources below can help you access billions of digital objects available freely online.
Internet Archives
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.

WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU Libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings.
ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
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.
Archive Finder This link opens in a new window
Archive Finder is a current directory which describes thousands of collections of primary source material housed in repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

V&A's Theatre & Performance Archives
The V&A's Theatre & Performance Archives are the national collection of performing arts documenting current practice and the history of all areas of performing arts in the UK, including drama, dance, opera, circus, puppetry, comedy, musical theatre, costume, set design, pantomime, popular music and more.
Joe Vaněk Archive of Theatre and Opera Design
The Joe Vaněk archive of theatre and opera design has been made fully accessible at the Hardiman Library at NUI Galway. One of Ireland's leading stage designers over the last three decades, the twice Tony award-nominated (Dancing at Lughnasa - 1990) Vaněk has collaborated throughout his career with playwrights such as Brian Friel and Frank McGuinness, with directors such as Patrick Mason, and theatres from the Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre, and many others from Dublin to Broadway.
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Hamm Archives
The BAM Hamm Archives collects, organizes, protects, and provides access to materials and documents that chronicle BAM’s ongoing history, programs, and people. We invite you to explore the rich past of this adventurous institution through our collection of images, text, video and audio recordings.
Roundabout Theatre Company Archives
Through dedicated funding from the Leon Levy Foundation, the Roundabout Theatre Company Archives launched in 2008. During your visit, you'll discover production photographs, publicity materials, set and costume sketches, scripts, audio and video, cast recordings, costumes, institutional records, theatre reconstruction documentation, and records chronicling our education program.

Selected Historical Databases

An advert for P.T. Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid" in 1842.

Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window
O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series are just a few of the many in-copyright sources included in the Theatre in Context Collection. Placed alongside thousands of playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, users will be able to paint a more comprehensive picture of the life and evolution of dramatic works.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present. In addition to well-known works, when completed, the collection will feature unique, fugitive and never-before-published materials, including the first-ever complete full run of the Black Panther newspaper. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
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.
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.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection contains over 96,000 titles -- 230 years of English printing -- listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection.
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.
C19: The 19th Century Index This link opens in a new window
C19: The 19th Century Index provides bibliographic coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives from the English-speaking world. This database includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1824-1900), Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, Palmer's Index to The Times, the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and more.
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.

Newspaper Research

Advert for Shadrach Minkins for sale in newspaper notice,1851.

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Includes the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, and more. Newspapers are in PDF format and provide a visual representation of the newspaper.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 provides access to searchable digitized copies of newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries for a Hispanic readership. It features hundreds of monolingual and bilingual newspapers in Spanish and English, including many obscure titles from the 19th century.
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.

Guide to International Collections

SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions
SIBMAS is the International Association of Libraries, Museums, Archives and Documentation Centres of the Performing Arts. We promote research in the performing arts, facilitate networking among our members and share resources about their specific collections and the performing arts in general.

Letters, Diaries & Oral Histories

Oral History Online
Provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world.

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.

Historical Image Collections

The American actress Charlotte Cushman advertised in William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Washington Theater in 1861.

American Broadsides and Ephemera This link opens in a new window
Facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.
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

Historical Texts

A source book in theatrical history = Sources of theatrical history by Nagler, A. M. (Alois Maria), 1907- • 2013
Call Number: PN2101 .N3 1959
ISBN: 0486205150
Eyewitness to history by John Carey • 1988
Call Number: D5 .E94 1988
ISBN: 0674287509
Janson's History of art : the western tradition
Call Number: N5300 .J29 2011
ISBN: 9780205685172
Sir Banister Fletcher's A history of architecture.
Call Number: NA200 .F63 1987
ISBN: 0750622679
Home : a short history of an idea
Call Number: NA7125 .R9 1987
ISBN: 0140102310
Seeing through clothes
Call Number: N8217.C63 H64 1993
ISBN: 0520082311