BLACK DRAMA

Description

The Black Drama database contains the full-text of more than 1,200 plays by over 200 playwrights. The plays, which were written from the mid-1800's to the present in the United States, Caribbean, and several African nations, explore many different topics including civil rights activism, interracial unity, desegregation, and apartheid. Also included are significant plays of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts movement of the sixties and seventies. Many titles are being published for the first time in this set.

Accompanying each play is information about the playwright, characters in the play, and, sometimes, production details.

From the UWM Libraries homepage, select �Resources A-Z,� click on �B,� and scroll down to Black Drama.

There are several ways to access the plays in the Black Drama Database.

Table of Contents

Select �Table of Contents� from any page in Black Drama. Choose authors, plays, productions, related media resources, years, characters, theaters, theatrical companies, or subjects. An alphabetical or numerical listing of resources will appear. For example, after choosing Authors, an alphabetical list of authors is displayed, with links to information on each author including Biographical Details and Published Plays. When choosing Years from the �Table of Contents,� plays are listed under the year written, beginning with 1846.

Find

Select �Find,� and then select a category of choice to locate authors, characters, productions, resources, plays, scenes, or theaters by entering specific criteria into the search fields. Enter keywords into one or more fields when searching in any category. For example, when searching to find a specific play, enter keywords from the title, information about the author, year published, and/or other information in various search fields. Search fields vary depending on the category.

Search Texts

Select �Search Texts� to search full-text documents and/or bibliographic citations. Choose the �Simple Search� or �Multi-field Search� option.

Characters to use in full-text searching:

Truncation: Use an * (asterisk) to retrieve word variants. The * can be used to match any string of characters, either at the beginning or end of a word. For example, *habit will retrieve habit, cohabit, and inhabit; cigar* will retrieve cigar, cigars, or cigarette.

Wildcard Character: Use a . (period) to match any single character within a word. For example, wom.n will retrieve women or woman.

Boolean Operators:

To use the OR operator, insert a vertical line (|) between the words. This is useful for synonyms. For example, elderly|aged or prejudice|discrimination. Using the | symbol between words will search for both terms and will broaden the search.

To use the AND operator, leave a space between the terms. Leaving a space between words will search retrieve results where both terms are present and will narrow the search.

For the Search Texts search option, results may be sorted in the following ways:

• Context Display (Default)
• Line by Line
• ByAuthor
• By Source
• By Year

Additional Searches

Select �Help� from the databases navigation bar for additional information on �Full-Text Searching,� �Field Searching,� �Fields� and their descriptions, and other search procedures. Field information will vary for individual plays, but can be used for additional criteria concerning the playwright (e.g., age when writing, school attended, etc.), the play (e.g., character name, genre, literary period, location), or play performance (e.g., theater name, director, performances, etc.).

Results

From the citation, click on the title for the full-text or on other underlined headings to link to information concerning production details, character information, or bibliographic details, etc. The type of information provided about the individual plays varies. The list of results are the occurences of the search term(s) within the full text of the plays.

Print Results

Select the �Print� icon from the tool bar near the top of the page. Use �Print Preview� to verify that only the necessary pages are being printed.

Save

Individual full-text items from the results can be saved to a disk, page by page. After the page is displayed, choose �File�Save As� from the browser menu. Then chose �a:\drive� from the drop down menu. Click �Save.�

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sacoenen; 5/25/04; mod 05/01/2006