Access thousands of play texts online using Drama Online

Drama Online is a fantastic resource for anyone studying or performing theatre, which can be accessed through the University of Sheffield Library. The collection features full text digital versions of over 2000 plays from over 500 playwrights. These include, among others, William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Bertolt Brecht, debbie tucker green, and John Osborne. The coverage is growing with the works of Samuel Beckett and over 100 additional plays from Nick Hern Books - a leading UK publisher of performing arts materials - being some recent additions.

Plays can be browsed by genre or time period, as well as by the playwright or practitioner name. You can also search for plays with a particular number of roles or scenes. Drama Online includes biographical information about each playwright and contextual information about each play and its original performance.

The plays themselves include embedded commentary and textual notes. Signing up for a personal account gives you access to the annotation tools. You can bookmark particular lines and add your own tags and notes. If necessary you can also print your notes along with the section of the play they refer to. Drama Online have produced some helpful video tutorials about the different functionality of the site. These are available on the left hand side of the Drama Online homepage.

To get to Drama Online simply search StarPlus for Drama Online, follow the links to full text access and to Connect to Drama Online. Next time you can leave that Collected Works of Shakespeare at home!

Image credit: Nick Hern Books

Penn Corpora of Historical English

Of interest to students studying the history of English, (especially the historical syntax of the language), the Penn Corpora of Historical English are running texts and text samples of British English prose across its history - from the earliest Middle English documents up to the First World War.  This online version includes:

• The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Second Edition (PPCME2)
• The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME)
• The Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE)

Click under 'Quick Links' to visit the resource. Remember to make sure you're logged into Muse

Welcome New Students

Hello,

Are you from School of English, Music or School of Languages and Cultures? I am your subject specialist and you can find my contact details here: Clare Scott

http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/liaison/arts

Are you from Biblical Studies, History, Archaeology or Philosophy? Amy Collins is your subject specialist and you can find her contact details here too: Amy Collins

http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/liaison/arts

You may want to take a look at our Introduction to the Library and Computing Services web page so you can get to know how to use our Library:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/services/new

Amy and I look forward to meeting you in some special Information Literacy sessions as part of your core curriculum this coming semester.

See you all soon, Clare and Amy

Faculty of Arts Trip to Boston Spa 22 May

Yesterday Amber Regis, DLC for School of English, and I took 30 PGRs and Faculty of Arts researchers on a special coach trip to Boston Spa. Here we all are looking happy after a successful day in the Reading Room doing our research!

We arrived shortly after 10am and collected our reader passes and locker keys. You are only allowed to take a pencil and notebook into the reading room, so we had to leave our bags in the lockers. Some people had brought their laptops, which can be done by pre-arrangement.

When we went into the lovely peaceful reading room there were our piles of pre-ordered books and journals waiting for us. It is also possible to order more items on the day but they only go down 3-4 times to collect other items, so this needs to be kept in mind when you plan your trip.You can pre-order up to 16 items by checking the British Library catalogue:

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/cdfiles/blopac

You need to pick items with a "Document Supply" shelfmark - other material may be in London at St. Pancras. 

We worked through until 12.30 when most of us went off to the nearby restaurant and had lasagne, chips and garlic bread for £1.75!!! There were vegetarian options too. They also did puddings with custard, sandwiches, biscuits, cold and hot drinks. My coffee was only 75p. What a bargain! There is a card system for paying for lunch. Everyone was most impressed with the catering. You could pop in and out for drinks etc. but the smokers had a short walk to a nearby smoking shelter!

We all finished our research day and handed our books back just before 4pm as the reading room was closing and got back on the bus. We were back in Sheffield for 5.30pm. All in all an excellent experience and everyone enjoyed it- especially the peace and tranquillity and opportunity to concentrate away from email and interruptions.

Did you know that the Library runs a free minibus trip once per month - on the first Tuesday of the month? You can book onto it and pre-order your readings through the Library. For more information see our page here:

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/services/illbus

It is also possible to visit the British Library at Boston Spa under your own steam. If you have a car you can drive to Wetherby. Perhaps you could team up with some other researchers and share driving and petrol costs. If you need to use public transport you can get there by going to Leeds on the train from Sheffield and there is a local bus from Leeds to the British Library at Boston Spa. For more information on visiting the Boston Spa Reading Room have a look at the British Library webpages here:

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/bspa/bostonspa.html

We hope after this more researchers in the Faculty of Arts will use the Library minibus service.