Finding Reviews

How to locate reviews of plays and films : a bibliography of criticism from the beginnings to the present. BARNARD REFERENCE PN1631 .S19 1976g
Useful to get ideas of sources to use identifying reviews, particularly for pre-1980s' performances.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Choose Full Search, click the box for Arts & Humanities Citation Index, and then choose General Search.  On the search screen, type in words to describe your topic (playwright and play title for example) and then, towards the bottom of the screen, use the pull-down menu (middle box) to limit your results to Theater Review.

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe
This electronic service provides the full-text of thousands of newspapers, both national and international. Choose the News, and then decide if you want a mix of national and international (General News), national (U.S. News), or international (World News). The New York Times will be included in all of these, but you may be looking for reviews beyond the New York Times, such as the Times (London).  Many resources go back to the 1980s, but some only go back as far at the mid 1990s. For example, the New York Times goes back to June 1, 1980, while the Village Voice extends back to June 7, 1994. 
Searching Hints: Words together will be searched as a phrase. Use AND between phrases if you don't want them next to each other.
Example: Hedda Gabler and review.
Also, use the Help screens for more information about narrowing your results (or ask for help at the Reference Desk).

The New York Times Index. 
BARNARD REF. Index Table (1933 - present) and BUTLER REF. R070 N481 (1851 - present). You'll need to know the production's year. The NYT Index is particularly useful for New York performances.
Look under the term Theater--Reviews and Other Data on Specific Productions, then look for the title of the play. For reviews published after 1979 you can also use LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe (see above).

Readers' Guide To Periodical Literature
BARNARD REF. AI3 .R48 (1900 -    )
This indexes mainstream magazines (primarily American) like Nation, Newsweek, etc.  The electronic version goes back to 1993; for earlier years use the print version and look under the playwright's name to find articles and reviews.

Poole's Index To Periodical Literature. 
BARNARD REF. AI3 .P7 1938g(1802 - 1881)
Indexes British publications and some American publications.
Use CLIO to find which library owns the periodical; if the title does not appear in CLIO, check the Union List of Serials.
Poole's is also available online:
Poole's Plus
Includes several 19th-century periodical indexes: Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906), Stead's Index to Periodicals (1890-1906), Cumulative Index to Selected List of Periodicals (1896-1899), New York Daily Tribune Index
(1875-1906), New York Times Index (1863-1905), Harper's Magazine Index (1850-1892), Library Journal Index (1876-1897).

ProQuest
ProQuest is a huge database of newspapers, general magazines, and scholarly journals. Much of what it retrieves will be full-text, but some material will be citations only. Be careful that you choose the correct date range. It is most useful for reviews and articles from the 1990s to current.

Periodical Indexes for Scholarly material.
You may find some performance reviews using these indexes, but they will be most useful for looking for scholarly interpretations, overviews and theoretical writings.

ABELL (once you connect to LION click on Search Criticism and Reference)
ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Literature and Language), like the MLA (below), provides citations to  monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations published anywhere in the world from 1920 onwards. All aspects and periods of English literature are covered. In addition to citations, the full text of 65 journals is available. To search ABELL, from the LION home page choose Search Secondary Sources. Use ABELL in conjunction with the MLA Bibliography for a thorough literature search.

America : History and Life
Major periodical index covering all aspects of U.S and Canadian history (social, intellectual, military, and political history).

Historical Abstracts
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/historical-abs.html
Citations and abstracts for scholarly articles in all aspects of history (not including the United States and Canada). 

Humanities Abstracts
A basic index to the humanities, including literature. A useful starting place when looking for journal articles, particularly if you're still playing around with your paper topic. The majority of journals will be available at Columbia (not true of the MLA - see below).

International Index to the Performing Arts
Covers drama, theater, film, and the broadcast arts.

MLA
Major index for literature (and much film criticism falls into literature). In addition to scholarly articles, the MLA indexes essays, books and dissertations. Although much wil be available at Columbia, quite a bit may not be owned by Columbia. You can request material not at CU using InterLibrary Loan and/or Borrow Direct from the Request It page. Consider checking the Catnyp (NYPL Research Libraries Catalog) or Bobcat (NYU) to see if material is held at either of these locations. Connect to these catalogs from the Catalogs page.

Current Columbia faculty, staff and students only.

Barnard Library | Databases (Online Reference Works & Indexes) | Columbia University Libraries

Updated October 30, 2001
Cynthia A. Johnson