Research Guides: Primary Sources: Finding Primary Source in Theatre and the Arts

Primary Resources for Theatre and the Arts in the Jerry Falwell Library

Digital Theatre+ This link opens in a new window
Full-length productions of live performances and education resources for illustration, explanation, and critical reflection in the performing arts
Music Online: Jazz Music Library This link opens in a new window
Audio streams of sound recordings of jazz, including a variety of artists, ensembles, albums, and genres
Music Online: Opera in Video This link opens in a new window
Video of the most important opera performances, including staged productions, interviews, and documentaries that represent the world’s best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a work’s importance to the operatic canon
Theatre in Context This link opens in a new window
Reference materials and records to plays, people, theatres, productions, and production companies covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre, including images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks, and other resources
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
Videos covering a wide range of 20th century theatre history, including documentaries as well as interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances

Niagara Falls, 1857 - Oil on canvas - Frederic Edwin Church

The Granger Collection/ Universal Images Group - Rights Managed/ For Education Use Only

Multimedia collection from various Library of Congress holdings of Vaudeville and popular entertainment from 1870-1920

The Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library has a dynamic collection of over 150,000 files on Artists, Art Institutions, Collectors, and art-related Subjects. Files generally contain Ephemera such as small exhibition brochures; announcements of or invitations to gallery shows; press releases; newspaper, magazine, or auction catalog clippings; and/or reproductions.

Includes 50,000 design drawings, documents, and engineering projects throughout the world. Another of its collections is the Cabinet of American Illustration. It also has the Drawings (Master) collection of works by artists of various nationalities.among many other areas of interest.

Holds more than 51,000 open access digital images available free of charge for download and use.

Published around 1550, Vasari wrote some of the first biographies of many famous Italian artists. Vasari is an important resource because he knew some of the artists personally, and lived during the same era as many of the others.