As a result of heavy usage of the material housed in the initial release of the Oberon ebook collection launched in 2021, the Library has now expanded its coverage to incorporate a second release of some 400 further (individually indexed) titles from this key publisher of plays and books on theatre practice and theory. In additional to canonical texts, the portfolio incorporates an unparalleled range of new writing from the contemporary era, including many significant works and writers that have been excluded from major collections to date. Particularly noteworthy in this release are some 39 plays by Howard Barker, whilst new works by Ontroerend Goed, Deborah Pearson, and Hannah Nicklin are also particularly welcome. Further evidence of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the drama department to support performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment, the material will also enhance efforts to rebalance our holdings and offer an opportunity to readily study and research a broader range of plays by contemporary Black and Global Majority artists.
A new addition to the Library’s Drama Online portfolio which completes a collection sourced from 10 years of ‘NT Live’ broadcasts. Now comprising 50 productions, the National Theatre Collection offers a compendium of high quality full-length staged performances stretching from Sophocles to Shakespeare and beyond. Available to all University of Manchester students, new additions incorporate: “marquee” productions from international directors of the calibre of Ivo van Howe; adaptations from poets, Kae Tempest and Inua Ellams, and acclaimed performances from the likes of Michaela Coel, Rory Kinnear, Ruth Wilson, and Mark Strong, together with “local” actors such as Lesley Sharp and Christopher Eccleston. To further discovery all titles are individually indexed on Library Search. The NT Collection complements the Library’s extensive reserves of streamed performances from other major UK theatre houses – including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s RSC Live Collection and The Globe On Screen – and form part of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the Drama and English, American Studies and Creative Writing departments to support the study of performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment.
One of the great treasures of The Rylands, our copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, has long been available online and open access through Library Digiitised Collections, but we’re delighted to announce it now features in the recently launched First Folios Compared project which brings together over 50 first folios (just over 20% of all known surviving copies) for researchers to examine and explore. It also of course provides another example of the Library’s active commitment to Open Access scholarship.
This project opens up a host of exciting opportunities for close textual examination and work in the digital humanities on an incontrovertibly seminal work, stretching beyond the 36 plays to encompass the physical journeys undergone by the books themselves through the course of 4 centuries - from the amendments of printers to the annotations of owners. Copies from Skipton to Sydney, together with all their extant metadata, are now readily and freely available for viewing and direct comparison.
For more on the Project see the ‘Summary’ in the Details section on the database entry on Library Search.
Databases provide access to high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, dissertations and other sources.
These databases have been especially chosen for this subject area.
When carrying out your research for a piece of work, you will need to search more than one database to find all of the journal articles relevant to your topic, as each database covers different journals.
Getting started with subject databases
This resource explores some of the key features of subject databases, demonstrating that while they can initially appear daunting and complicated, they can be as easy to use as any online shopping site
View all workshops and online resources in this area on the
My Learning Essentials webpages.
The library provides comprehensive access to a vast archive of British and overseas newspapers, including electronic access to many current publications. Newspapers are an excellent primary source research tool, not only providing reports about events and issues but also editorials and letters that can be extremely useful for deeper understanding. Access the Newspaper guide for further information.
The latest acquisition to our newspaper databases. Users can study the progression of issues over time by browsing issues extending from the newspaper’s first publication in May 1827 to effectively the present day (within 1 week), including articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, and more. Searching facilitated by user-friendly support and indexing tools, with hit-term highlighting, searchable PDFs, and image downloads in PDF format.
Grey literature refers to research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form. The term includes the following types of information:
The British Library reports, Conferences and Theses can be searched for through the British Library Integrated Catalogue.
Use these p tags if you need multiple paragraphs
The Conference Proceedings Citation Index Literature via Web of Science is taken from the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions worldwide. Available in two editions: Sciences & Technology and Social Science Literature from the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions worldwide. Available in two editions: Sciences & Technology and Social Science.
Google Scholar provides a quick way to search for scholarly literature across disciplines and sources. You can find articles, theses, books, abstracts and grey literature from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other sources.
Grey Net provides information about grey literature. GreySource Index provides a list of web-based grey literature resources.
MIAR is a matrix of data from more than 100 international indexing and abstracting databases (citation, multidisciplinary or specialised databases) and journal repertoires, which is developed with the purpose of providing useful information for the identification of scientific journals and the analysis of their diffusion. The system works through the elaboration of a correspondence matrix between the journals, identified by their ISSN, and the databases and directories that index or include them.
MIAR has more than 48,000 journal records, but a search in MIAR using a valid ISSN number will return information on the diffusion of any journal in the world at the sources analysed by MIAR, whether or not it has its own record in MIAR.
MIAR 2023 live. Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals.
OpenGrey is a multidisciplinary European resource which provides open access to 700,000 bibliographical references of grey literature produced in Europe. It covers science, technology, biomedical science, economics, social science and humanities.
Examples of grey literature include technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, conference papers and official publications.
Science.gov searches over 55 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results. Science.gov is governed by the interagency Science.gov Alliance.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences.
Scopus is a user-friendly database covering some 12,000 journals from all aspects of science, technology and medicine, with some quite sophisticated features.
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