Theater Collection Development Policy

Department History, Programs, Emphases

Formerly a part of the Department of Communication and Theatre, Theatre has been an independent department in the School of Fine Arts since 1985. It has eight full-time faculty and it regularly has about ten masters level graduate students. Besides a range of courses in theater arts, it offers a minor in arts management and it requires majors to take eighteen hours of drama literature courses (nine in the Theatre Department, the rest in Classics, English, French, or Spanish). Graduate students take a required research methods course. Library use is fairly heavy, especially in American theater history. In recent years there have been joint courses taught by Theatre and faculty in English (18th and 19th c. drama) and Spanish; there have been Theatre co urses in the Honors Program; majors must select from courses in Classics, English, French, or Spanish. BFA and BA majors theatre arts; minors in arts management, theatre arts, and in theatre history and drama; MA in theatre arts. Most theater productions use a dramaturg, which requires some library research by members of the acting and production staffs. In addition to performances on Miami's main stage, there are many productions by undergraduate and graduate directors. OxAct is Oxford's community theater group; Cincinnati has a healthy and accessible theater scene.

Overview of the Collection

Drama studies have long been a part of literature programs in Classics, English, French, German, and Spanish, and the book collection is solid in both plays and secondary studies. We hold several microform sets that give us virtually complete coverage of English and American plays through the nineteenth century, although not always in adequately scholarly editions. Through OhioLINK we have access to several full-text drama databases, and we maintain extensive links to Internet theater and drama text sites (see MiamiLINK / Research Resources / Electronic Texts). The extensive reference collection supports both theater and literary study of drama, including Ph.D. level work in English and American literature. The journal collection is strong, many titles having been added in recent years. The approval plan and direct order allocation bring in an adequate supply of scholarly and critical studies of English and American drama. A troublesome area, however, is primary editions of current plays, many of which are available only in acting editions that are not handled by our approval plans. The collection is used by people outs ide the Theatre Department.

The Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library has a solid collection of Reniassance, Restoration, and Eighteenth-Century British plays, and in addition it now owns the papers of Mexican playwright Udopho Usigli.

Of special note is the Native American Women Playwrights Archive, a collection of original, mostly unpublished plays by Native women of North America. NAWPA was started by a Theatre Department graduate student and the Theatre Librarian, and it has been active in programming and as an information center for Native theater, as its webpage indicates.

Materials

Formats
Books: At present not many plays are published commercially, so we must buy extensively from play publishers such as Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service, and Bakers Plays. Trade publishers of note at the moment include Theatre Communication Group, Meth uen, Grove, and Applause. We maintain an extensive reference collection in drama and theater, including guides to audition cuttings.
Periodicals: Periodicals carry mainly scholarly and professional articles; only a few regularly publish plays and we try to maintain subscriptions to these.
Non-Book Formats: As noted above, we have extensive historical collections in microform. We do not purchase audio or video recordings of productions or readings.
Languages, Publishers, Geographical Emphases
English language predominates. Theatre buys current English and American plays; the foreign language departments buy current plays in the original; most scholarship and criticism is English only. Publishers. See under Books, above. Geographical emphasis. The U.S.A. and England, with some attention to English language drama of Australia, Canada, and South Africa; general interest in world-wide theater and performance.
Special Concerns
Acting editions in lieu of commercial publication of plays: purchase these as soon as available and use of them is expected.
Multiple copies. Buy to support course needs but not for reading groups.
Preservation of 19th and 20th century materials is a serious problem.
Anthologies of plays are an important part of the collection and we try to keep current with the latest editions of Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections and Play Index.

Selection Guidelines

Audition needs
Anticipate users' needs by checking performance calendars for Miami, OxAct, and Cincinnati productions.
Standard sources
Best Plays of the Year, publishers' catalogs (including French, DPS, Applause, TCG, etc.), periodicals, current reviews in the media.
Acquisitions
Direct orders are essential for acquiring current plays, and the approval plan with Yankee Book Peddler provides only studies; the YBP profile was created in 1999. STO and periodical subscriptions were reviewed in 1999.
Resource Sharing
We rely on our own resources for current plays and support of most current faculty and graduate student research; OhioLINK brings us the collections at Ohio State and other Ohio academic libraries. We are a member of the Center for Research Libraries.

Return to the Theater Page.

Last updated May 2000.
Prepared by William A. Wortman, Humanities Librarian.