LibGuides: Theatre: Getting Started

Getting Started

When you're starting out on your research journey, you may not know where to begin. That's okay!

Scholarship is a conversation, and there are many ways you can engage in that conversation using library resources. Getting an overview of your topic and understanding the difference between primary or secondary sources is important; so is knowing the difference between scholarly or popular sources and a peer-reviewed journal. To help you feel inspired, try using some of these reference resources listed below to help you get started, or find other formats.

When you've defined your research topics use the Library Search feature, Google Scholar, or search the Web. Don't be afraid to search smarter, not harder using truncation to search for multiple topics effectively. And don't forget to use an assignment calculator to keep you on track!

Need more help with Library Search? Check out this help guide or watch the video below. Still confused? No worries! Email askus@uvic.ca. We are here to help you succeed in your research journey, whether you're in the first year of your undergraduate degree or your PhD.

Watch the videos below if you want to learn these tasks quickly and easily!

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources.
Oxford Reference Bringing together 2 million digitized entries across Oxford’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, Oxford Reference is the premier online reference product, spanning 25 different subject areas. Includes a core foundation of 135+ academic subject, language, and quotations dictionaries providing carefully vetted, trusted short-entry content.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism Brings together a wealth of interdisciplinary content about the Modernist period, and is the ideal starting point for any research in modernism. Over 1,000 articles from experts in the field, supported by over 100 images, the content is fully cross-referenced, allowing for greater discoverability between fields, and covers eight key subject areas: Literature, Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theatre, Film, and Intellectual Currents.
Very Short Introductions (Oxford) Concise introductions to a diverse range of subject areas from Climate to Consciousness, Game Theory to Ancient Warfare, Privacy to Islamic History, Economics to Literary Theory. All titles provide intelligent and serious introductions to a huge range of subjects, written by experts in the field who combine facts, analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make challenging topics highly readable.
Internet Shakespeare Editions The aim of the Internet Shakespeare Editions is to inspire a love of Shakespeare’s works in a world-wide audience. To do so, we create and publish works for the student, scholar, actor, and general reader in a form native to the medium of the Internet: scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare’s plays, multimedia explorations of the context of Shakespeare’s life and works, and records of his plays in performance.

Library Search Basics (Video)

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources (video)

Using Google Scholar (video)