Theatre 104: Finding Articles
About Indexes and Databases
To find scholarly articles on a topic, you will need to use a periodical index. Most of the Libraries' indexes are available as online databases, but in some cases you will need to consult a print index for older materials. Each periodical index focuses on a specific subject area or body of literature. Because most indexes are produced at a national level, they may include many magazines and journals not available at Williams. See below for more information about locating articles at Williams and borrowing from other libraries.
Indexes and Databases for Theatre
The core databases for theatre are:
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1975-Present)
One of three databases included in Web of Science. It indexes scholarly journal articles in the arts and humanities. Be sure to deselect the other Web of Science databases (Social Science and Science) to search only arts and humanities articles.
International Index to the Performing Arts (1998-Present; some coverage 1864-1998)
Contains reviews, conference papers, essays and biographies covering dance, film, television, theater, and other topics relating to the performing arts including circus arts, mime, magic and storytelling.
Search Tip: To get only journal articles, enter "Research and Analysis" as the Document Type on the article search screen (don't use quick search).
MLA International Bibliography (1926-Present)
Index to scholarly literature for language, literature, linguistics and related areas. Published by the Modern Language Association. MLA indexes articles, book chapters, working papers and proceedings.
The following ejournal collections allow searching the full-text of articles from core journals in many disciplines. Searching the full-text can be useful when you have a very specific topic and you are unable to find materials using indexes.
JSTOR (Coverage Varies)
Digital archive of core scholarly journals in arts, humanities, general science and social sciences. Historical collection covering complete run of each journal from its inception to 1-5 years ago.
Project MUSE (Coverage Varies)
Journals published by major university presses, especially journals in the humanities and social sciences.
See Also:
- Additional Theatre Indexes
- Expanded Academic Index (1980-Present) - Multi-disciplinary index to scholarly academic and general interest periodicals.
- Indexes in Related Areas: Anthropology, Art, History, Music, Religion
- Theatre and Performing Arts Ejournals
- Newspapers and News Resources
- For magazines (like National Geographic), try Readers' Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) and Readers' Guide Abstracts (1983-Present )
Locating Articles
While searching articles databases, you will want to determine whether the Williams College Libraries own the journals containing the articles you wish to read.
Many databases have this 
icon. When you click on the icon in the database, it will attempt to find an electronic version of the text in our collection. If it doesn't find an electronic version, it will give you a screen with a link to FRANCIS and WILL. The FRANCIS link sends a pre-formatted search into FRANCIS to find print or other electronic subscriptions in our collection. The WILL link provides an automatically filled-in interlibrary loan request form to get a copy from another library
If the database you are using does not have the Find Text icon, you can do a journal title search in FRANCIS or use Citation Linker.