LibGuides: Primary Sources Main: Arts (Art, Music, Video, Literature)

Art, Music, Film, and Literature Databases

ARTFL Consists of nearly 2600 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing.
Artstor Your Personal Collections (part of your personal account) are housed in Workspace, accessible from the top, right of the page. To create this account, use the Register button also located on the top, right of the page. The Artstor Digital Library provides more than one million images with tools for teaching and research. The collections cover many subject areas, including art, architecture, music, religion, anthropology, literature, world history.
Asian American Drama This edition of Asian American Drama contains 252 plays by 42 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the play.
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection (Kanopy) is committed to publishing the defining moments of cinema by building a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.
Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume I Contains dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance.
Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume II Dance in Video includes performances, documentaries, interviews, and instructional videos from the most influential performers and companies. The second volume showcases a new catalogue of dancers and partners including the Joffrey Ballet, John Jasperse Company, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Bavarian State Ballet, Royal Ballet of Cambodia, Kirov Ballet, and Compaa Nacional de Danza.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains over 130,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) To search Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Nineteenth Century Collections Online simultaneously, please see Gale Primary Sources database. Online access to the digital images of books published between 1701 and 1800. This collection includes ancient and contemporary history, accounts of voyages and discoveries, historical biographies and memoirs, genealogical collections, gazetteers, works on church antiquities and tourist guides of Britain. Topics include chronologies, recreation (travel, sports, parlor games), military history, maps, local history, and topography.
To search Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Nineteenth Century Collections Online simultaneously, see the Artemis Primary Sources database.
Fashion Studies Online: The Videofashion Library This collection includes videos that retrace the history of fashion, clothing, and costume worldwide.
Film & Television Literature Index This subscription was not renewed; it will be ending June 30, 2025. This resource is a comprehensive bibliographic database covering the entire spectrum of television and film writing. It has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.
Gale Primary Sources Gale Primary Sources combines Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online (modules 1-4), The Times Digital Archive, and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, allowing users to search all databases simultaneously. These primary source collections include digitized monographs, personal diaries, manuscripts, photographs, and maps.
Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals Access is limited to one (1) user Includes over 26,000 records from 42 art journals published in the United States during the 19th century. The entire contents of each issue are indexed in the database. It offers essential information on artists and illustrators, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, architecture, design, decoration, exhibitions, sales, and collecting.
Music & Performing Arts Music & Performing Arts combines audio and video that spans all time periods, hundreds of thousands of seminal artists, composers, choreographers, and ensembles to provide an unparalleled learning environment for the teaching of music.
Music Online: Classical Music in Video Music Online: Classical Music in Video is a comprehensive streaming video collection of classical music performances, masterclasses, interviews, and documentaries profiling classical artists and their work, spanning musical time periods from Medieval to the twenty-first century.
Music Online: Classical Music Library Music Online: Classical Music Library is an ever-growing, fully-searchable classical music resource a comprehensive collection of distinguished classical recordings. It includes tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to on the Internet. The audio selections are cross-referenced to a database of supplementary reference information. Users browse, search, click, and then listen to the music over the Internet through their headphones.
Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume I Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume I contains over 400,000 pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts, allowing for the access to more than 24,000 scores, searchable across various composers, genres, and time periods.
Music Online: Opera in Video Music Online: Opera in Video contains important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the worlds best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on their importance to the operatic canon.
New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives Open Access The New York Philharmonic Archives contains approximately six million pages dating back to 1842. Holdings include correspondence, business records, orchestral scores and parts, photographs, concert programs, and newspaper clippings, as well as concert and broadcast recordings dating from the 1920s.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Archives 1-4) To search Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Nineteenth Century Collections Online simultaneously, please see Gale Primary Sources. An international primary source collection of 19th century materials, such as monographs, personal diaries, manuscripts, photographs, and maps. Archives include: British Politics and Society; Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; and CORVEY Collection of European Literature (1790-1840).
PALMM Collection Open Access Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM) is a cooperative initiative of the public universities of Florida to provide digital access to important source materials for research and scholarship. PALMM projects may involve a single university or may be collaborative efforts between a university and partners within or outside of the state university system. PALMM projects create high-quality virtual collections relevant to the students, research community and general citizenry of Florida.
Past Masters Past Masters is a collection of primary-source full-text humanities databases. This resource includes the following: Aquinas: Collected Works; Aristotle: Complete Works; Augustine: Opera Omnia; Augustine: Works (2nd Release); Boyle: Works; Collingwood: Philosophical Texts (2nd Release); Continental Rationalists: Descartes-Spinoza-Leibniz; Darwin: Works; Descartes: Oeuvres Completes; Dewey: Collected Works; Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights; Hume: Complete Works and Correspondence; Latin Background: 1100-1550; Peirce: Collected Papers; Peirce: Published Works I; and Santayana: Works.
Philosopher's Index Philosopher's Index is a bibliographic database with informative, author-written abstracts covering scholarly research in all areas of philosophy. The literature covered goes back to 1940 and includes journal articles, books, book chapters such as contributions to an anthology, and book reviews.
Pop Culture Studies (Gale OneFile) This collection provides useful information for any researcher in a social science, history, art or liberal arts course. This collection is made up of more than 100 subject-appropriate full-text periodicals.
ProQuest One Literature This database replaces Literature Online (LION). ProQuest One Literature contains a large amount of primary works, including rare texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theater performances, and author readings. In addition, there are citations from thousands of journals, monographs, and dissertations. Other sources, such as book reviews and criticism, are found in interdisciplinary publications ranging from the humanities to history, thus providing diverse, global perspectives in sources from all over the world, the majority being full-text.
Recorded Sound Archives (RSA) Open Access The Recorded Sound Archives collection of over 100,000 recordings from the first half of the 20th century features pop performers such as Bing Crosby, Doris Day, and Al Jolson (RSA Vintage Collection); the worlds most extensive online collection of Jewish recordings; music and images from childrens recordings damaged by SuperStorm Sandy; unique picture records; and early recordings by Jazz greats such as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
Ringling Collection Open Access The Ringling Collection is comprised of cabinet cards, postcards and photographs of 19th Century American and British actors and actresses. There are more than 6,000 images in this digital collection depicting more than 3,000 actors and actresses. The Collection is important not simply for its pictures of the idols of a bygone era, but for its depictions of clothing, hair styles and other indicators of the period's social mores and attitudes. The original collection is housed in the Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts in the Smathers Libraries' Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida.
Silent Film Online Silent Film Online brings together films which represent the basis of modern cinematic technique and film theory. The database covers silent features, serials, and shorts from the 1890s to the 1930s, and includes the most complete, authoritative versions of the highest quality from leading distributors.
Theatre in Video Theatre in Video contains more than 250 definitive performances of the world's leading plays, together with more than 100 film documentaries, online in streaming video - more than 500 hours in all, representing hundreds of leading playwrights, actors and directors.