North American Theatre Online is the largest reference initiative ever undertaken in this subject area, a major reference tool containing tens of thousands of pages of key, in-copyright reference works available electronically for the first time. It’s the tool for cross-searching all the Alexander Street Press full-text drama collections available in your library, as well. North American Theatre Online contains semantically indexed detail records that link users to a world of information at hundreds of editorially selected sites on the Web.

The project will grow to include additional reference details that are unique to this resource—bibliographic records with information about authors, plays, theatres, and related information.

CONTENT

Full-text reference works: Built into the database are approximately 40,000 pages of important reference sources in electronic format for the first time, indexed and searchable along with the other content. Included are O’Dell’s Annals of the New York Stage, the Oxford University Press Companion series, and Greenwood’s American Theatre Companies series—to name just a few of the many in-copyright sources we have licensed. These materials are finally available electronically, and now they are searchable with Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing™.

Bibliographic information: The database features in-depth detail records for more than 10,000 plays, including many previously unpublished works by major authors. In contrast to existing reference works, North American Theatre Online lists partial works, works that have never been performed, and works that were believed lost, providing researchers with unique and never-before-seen information. More than 20 fields allow the material to be searched by location, date, format, number of characters, theatre style, production company, and a rich choice of other search criteria.

Related resources: North American Theatre Online itself includes more than 1,000 playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera, and it provides further links to thousands of additional items on the Web.

Web resources: Editorially selected Web resources take users to the best of the Web in theatre. Unlike a traditional Web search, the North American Theatre Online search will integrate Web sites that have been identified by our editors and advisors as valuable.

North American Theatre Online uses Alexander Street Conductor™ technology. It will allow users to do one search across all of the following—newly created content within the database itself; hundreds of editorially selected Web resources and archival collections (with semantically indexed bibliographic records for the Web sites); tens of thousands of pages of in-copyright, licensed reference texts; and any of the Alexander Street full-text drama collections to which your library subscribes or that you have purchased. The Conductor will orchestrate the search results into one unified results set. Users also can to hyperlink to and from production information, author information, theatre information, and other components within the database.

PUBLICATION DETAILS

North American Theatre Online is available on the Web. It is an ever-growing project that will be updated quarterly.

North American Theatre Online includes:

• 40,000-plus pages of essential in-copyright reference texts in this area, licensed from major publishers, electronically formatted, semantically indexed, and cross-searchable for the first time.
• Related resources, including posters, playbills, photos, architectural images, floor plans, and other ephemera.
• Links to hundreds of editorially selected theatre Web resources, integrated with our semantically indexed bibliographic records.
• Cross-searching of any Alexander Street full-text drama collections already in your library.
• Additional unique reference information detailing people, plays, theatres, and more.
• Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing™ throughout, for searching in new ways.

North American Theatre Online PLUS includes:

• All of the above as well as full access to all Alexander Street full-text drama collections:
  
  • Black Drama
  • Twentieth Century North American Drama
  • Asian American Drama
  • Latino Literature
  • North American Women’s Drama.

Libraries can subscribe annually either to North American Theatre Online or to North American Theatre Online PLUS, with prices scaled to budget.

There is an option for a one-time purchase of some of the components—the 40,000-plus pages of full-text reference texts licensed from the various publishers and the Alexander Street full-text drama collections. The purchase of the entire drama cluster offers tremendous savings and eliminates many recurring access fees. Please contact us for details. Contact sales@alexanderstreet.com or your sales representative for more information.