Some plays are published individually and some are published in anthologies (multiple plays printed together in one book). Plays published individually are very easy to find. Search in Library Search using a title, author, or keyword search.
Locating plays in anthologies can sometimes take a few extra steps because the individual plays are not always listed in the catalog, but just the name of the book (e.g., Twenty Best Plays of 1990).
- Try searching for the play title as a KEYWORD in combination with the playwright's last name (e.g., Cat on a hot tin roof AND Williams)
- Try searching in MELVYL for the play title as a KEYWORD in combination withe playwright's last name. Limit the libraries that are being searched to UC IRVINE LIBRARIES.
- Try searching for the playwright's name and one of the following words: DRAMA, PLAYS, or WORKS (e.g., Tony Kushner and plays)
- It can be difficult to find a play dealing with particular subject matter. The best way to do this would be to search in Play Index by SUBJECT then to search for that particular play in Library Search.
Play Index is an index to many play anthologies. You can search by playwright, play title, subject, genre, number of performers, and several other variables to locate plays. After locating the individual play in the Index, search for the title of the play ANTHOLOGY in Library Search to determine if UC Irvine Libraries owns this particular anthology.
Inter-Play:An Online Index to Plays in Collections, Anthologies, and Periodicals is another resource to locate individual plays that are publishes as part of a larger work. It doesn't have as many search options as Play Index, but it does cover some resources not covered in Play Index.
