LibGuides: Theatre and Performance: Archives, Visual Resources, &amp; Video

Archival Collections

Sarah Lawrence College Library Catalog: The Library Catalog connects you to materials available through Sarah Lawrence College, and beyond. Use the Advanced Search to limit the format to Archival Materials to discover archival collections at Libraries Worldwide.
ArchiveGrid: ArchiveGrid includes over four million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies."

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Librarian Tip: Search for the individual library, special collection, or archives for more information about how to access collections, and to see if there are any restrictions on their use. Looking for coverage of an event, group, or area? Collections are not always described by the general information, sometimes you will need to parse out specifics and look for archives, papers, or coverage of that information. For instance, are you researching a group? Find out key people in the group and search for them (one of them might have donated their papers to an archive).

La Mama Experimental Theater Club Digital Catalog
NYPL Digital Collections Search through the over 800,000 digitized items from the New York Public Library’s collections, with prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Also has a feature in which public domain items have been enhanced and labelled so that they may be used in various ways.
Moving Image Archive - The Internet Archive "A rich core collection of archival movies uploaded by users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download."
The Moving Image Research Center at the Library of Congress The Library of Congress began collecting motion pictures in 1893 when Thomas Edison and his brilliant assistant W.K.L. Dickson deposited the Edison Kinetoscopic Records for copyright. However, because of the difficulty of safely storing the flammable nitrate film used at the time, the Library retained only the descriptive material relating to motion pictures. In 1942, recognizing the importance of motion pictures and the need to preserve them as a historical record, the Library began the collection of the films themselves; from 1949 on these included films made for television. Today the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS) is responsibile for the acquisition, cataloging and preservation of the Library's motion picture and television collections. The Moving Image Research Center to provides access and information services to an international community of film and television professionals, archivists, scholars and researchers. Our holdings complement the audio recordings served in the Recorded Sound Research Center.
The Playbill Vault The Playbill Vault is a comprehensive online database of Broadway history. Playbill Vault provides records of Broadway productions from 1930 to the present.[4] Information on the website includes original and current casts, actor head shots, production credits, Playbill cover images, scanned Playbill Who's Who pages, production photos, and videos.
Roundabout Theatre Archive Digital Archive This collection reflects the scope of our work as a producing company managing five unique stages, both on and off Broadway. Whether you've come to discover more of our rich history, search our records for your own research, or just relive past productions, we hope you'll enjoy learning about Roundabout's growth from a small off-Broadway theatre to our place today as one of the country's most influential not-for-profit cultural organizations.
UCLA Film & Television Archives UCLA Film & Television Archive is renowned for its pioneering efforts to rescue, preserve and showcase moving image media, and is dedicated to ensuring that the collective visual memory of our time is explored and enjoyed for generations to come. Established in 1965, the Archive is the second-largest repository of motion pictures and broadcast programming in the United States, after the Library of Congress, and the world's largest university-held collection.

Anthology Film Archives nthology Film Archives may be best known to the public at large for our film exhibition program, but our extensive archival collections represent a crucially important part of our activities and mission. Anthology holds one of the world’s most extensive and invaluable collections of avant-garde films and videos, housing, protecting, and preserving works on 35mm, 16mm, and Regular- and Super-8mm film, and on various video formats, as well as film stills and audio recordings
The Billy Rose Theatre Division at NYPL The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. Encompassing dramatic performance in all its diversity, the division is an indispensable resource for artists, writers, researchers, scholars, students, and the general public.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club Archives La MaMa’s collections offer an intimate perspective on major social, aesthetic, and political movements of the 20th and 21st centuries that resonate with histories of peoples across the globe. Where else would you find original plays by Vietnam War veterans alongside video of performances about the AIDS crisis; unpublished scripts by Japanese filmmaker Shuji Terayama alongside photos and correspondence by Polish revolutionary director Tadeusz Kantor? A portion of these materials are available for viewing on our new Digital Collections website, catalog.lamama.org.
MOMA Film Study Center MoMA’s Department of Film holds significant primary sources on film-related figures and topics. These may be accessed by appointment at the Film Study Center. Please note that access restrictions apply to certain collections. Appointments must be confirmed three weeks in advance.
Museum of the Moving Image
Performing Arts Library at NYPL

Segal Talks This youtube channel houses all the archived video from The Segal Center's past seasons, starting in 2012.
HowlRound TV HowlRound is a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide and a knowledge commons that encourages freely sharing intellectual and artistic resources and expertise. HowlRound TV provides ways to join upcoming streaming events or view past event videos in the livestream archive.
OntheBoards.tv OntheBoards.tv is a first-of-its-kind portal for viewing full-length, high-quality performance films on your TV, desktop, or laptop. It functions as a streaming subscription service and an archive for ground-breaking artistic projects and contemporary performances. The films featured on the website include international and US-based contemporary artists, some of whom are rarely seen live stateside, with works that might not be performed again.
Ubuweb UbuWeb is a large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives

Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video platform for universities that offers viewers a large collection of award-winning films and documentaries. Learn more about accessing films on Kanopy
Alexander Street Video This link opens in a new window Access to a selection of feature films and documentaries from Alexander Street Video
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text This link opens in a new window Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text provides access to a wide variety of resources, including full-text film and television journals, international periodicals, monographs, yearbooks, conference papers and much more. Updated on a weekly basis, this database provides full text for hundreds of journals and books and cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts and selected coverage for hundreds of publications. Variety movie reviews from 1914 to present and a vast image collection from the MPTV Image Archive are also included.

Image Resources - General (not Theatre or Performance related)

The MET Digital Collection Comprehensive image and article database covering not only the objects in the MET's collection, but also topics such as conservation and cultural heritage.
Victoria & Albert Museum Search the 1,221,563 objects and 802,226 images from the V&A's collections.
Google Arts & Culture Image database featuring museum collections and images from historic events. Search by collection, art movement or artist, or theme, such as Black History & Culture, Internet Art, the Wonders of China, or Day of the Dead.
Artsy Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. The database contains over 1,000,000 works of art, architecture, and design by 100,000 artists spanning historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art.
Europeana Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools.
NYARC: New York Art Resources Consortium The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) consists of the research libraries and archives of three leading art museums in New York City: The Brooklyn Museum, The Frick Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art.
Walpole Society Online A selective guide to freely available online resources for the study of the history of British art and architecture from earliest times to the 20th century. Launched January 2013.
The Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture The Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture collects and creates electronic resources for study and research of the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. Included are electronic texts and facsimiles, image databases, and Web resources.
Watercolour World Online database of documentary watercolours painted before 1900. Users can explore these visual records on a world map, search for topics, and compare watercolours from multiple collections in one place.
Islamic Painted Page The Database covers examples of the painted page dating from about 700 to 1900 CE from all over the Islamic world. Persian painting and Ottoman painting are especially widely covered but Arab, Sultanate, Mughal and other sources are all included. The Database includes illuminations, decorated Qur'an pages and book bindings as well as figurative paintings in manuscripts, albums and on single pages.
iPhotoCentral I Photo Central is a searchable database of photographs and includes articles on collecting issues (such as connoisseurship and print values; insurance and risk management; appraisals; buying and selling images; developing a photography collecting library; framing/matting and preserving your collection; conservation, etc.). An additional Special Exhibits section focuses on specific topics, photography processes (such as autochromes, daguerreotypes, stereo views and oratones), contemporary photography and individual photographers.

Library of Congress: Digital Collections Provides free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience from the Library of Congress.
British Library: Public Domain Images Explore over a million public domain illustrations and images from the British Library through Flickr. Users can reuse, remix, or repurpose images ranging from early photographs to all sorts of illustrations.
Brooklyn Visual Heritage Brooklyn Visual Heritage makes digitized historic images of Brooklyn easily accessible to a diverse audience. Working with Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Public Library. Search by institution, subject, or location.
California's Old Series Trademarks Search a digitized collection of 3,940 trademark applications filed with the Secretary of State between 1861 and 1900. The originals are held by the State Archives. These "Old Series Trademarks" provide a colorful glimpse of commerce and consumer goods in the Golden State at a time when the industrial revolution and transcontinental railroad brought transformative change and expansive new markets for products from California farms, vineyards, and factories.
Calisphere from University of California A database of the digitized collections from California libraries, archives, and museums. With over 400,000 images, texts, and recordings, highlights from the collections include photographs and other primary sources on: Japanese American Internment, Chinese Exclusion Act, Dust Bowl Migration and more.
Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York Provides online access to digital collections of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies located in and around New York City, including NYC and Westchester. Available images include photographs, maps, letters, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, programs from events, catalogues, memorabilia, ephemera, and more.
DPLA (Digital Public Library of America) A portal that provides different ways to search across a wide selection of digital collections from libraries, museums, archives, and other institutional repositories in the United States. Search through curated exhibitions, explore by place or date, search through images, text, and more.
Internet Archive Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, music, images, TV news, and more.
MET Digital Collection Search the digitized collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with over 400,000 images and artworks. You can also filter to search by works in the public domain, which can be freely utilized for any purpose.
Museum of the City of New York: Collections Browse more than 185,000 images from the Museum of the City of New York collections, including their Theater Collection, Costumes & Textiles, Manuscripts & Ephemera, and more.
NYPL Digital Collections Search through the over 800,000 digitized items from the New York Public Library’s collections, with prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Also has a feature in which public domain items have been enhanced and labelled so that they may be used in various ways.
Photogrammar Search through the 170,000 photographs from 1935-1945 by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA –OWI). Use the interactive map to search for photographs, or search by photographer.
Smithsonian Libraries: Galaxy of Images Collection of digitized images from the Smithsonian Libraries.
Wikimedia Commons
World Digital Library "The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world."

Ad*Access Over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Focus is placed on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygeine, and World War II. The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Gallery of Graphic Design A collection of advertisements from 1930 to 1969.
GLAAD Advertising Library An online library of over 4,000 LGBT-inclusive ads that focuses on mainstream corporate advertising and its affect on how the LGBT community is perceived. .Collects worldwide corporate (including political, government, and health agency) ads with direct references to LGBT people or with a LGBT theme.
Emergence of Advertising in America Offers over 9,000 images from 1850-1900, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials are from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.

In New York Times Historical you can search for advertisements by going to Advanced Search and selecting the Document type

Flickr Commons The Commons offers access to images with no known copyright restrictions from over 70 institutions. In almost all cases, the images have already entered the Public Domain. Users can limit their image searches to a specific institution or keyword.
Pixabay Searchable database of free, high quality images which can be shared without permission or attribution to the artist.
Unsplash High-resolution photos licensed under Creative Commons Zero. You are free to copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without permission or attribution.