The internet is awash in digital content documenting the global history of performance. Finding the often siloed collections can be a challenge, but the resources below can help you access billions of digital objects available freely online.

A list of Digital Humanities Projects in Performing Arts can be found here.

Please share this list with your colleagues, and help improve it by suggesting additions and reporting broken links. New sites will be added regularly.

Published: August 27, 2018
Last Updated: August 31, 2020

Digital Hubs

Digital hubs allow you to search digital collections from multiple institutions through a single search engine.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
Pulling together collections from over 40 institutions in the United States including the Smithsonian, New York Public Library, Harvard, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. You can browse the collections by partner institution or by topic (in beta), explore curated web exhibitions and primary source sets that are great for classes, or search the collection of 15+ million digitized items, growing every day. DPLA offers handy user guides for people just getting started.

Europeana
The European Union’s digital platform for cultural heritage hosts digital content from over a hundred institutions including the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the National Library of Poland. You can search the collections, or browse by topic, people, and time period.

Internet Archive
One of the largest digital hubs, the Internet Archive gathers open access collection material from a variety of sources across the internet. Known in particular for their efforts to archive websites, they also have books, images, film, and sound recordings that have entered the public domain.

Trove
Trove aggregates digital collections from the national, state, and territorial libraries of Australia. Especially strong on digitized newspapers, the collections have been rapidly growing to include photos, letters, diaries, manuscripts, video, music, and archived websites. You can find a handy user guide for Trove here.

World Digital Library (WDL)
Founded by UNESCO and the Library of Congress, the WDL is trying to bridge digital collections across geographic areas. Currently hosting about 20,000 items from nearly 200 countries, the collections are relatively small but growing and hold contributions largely from national libraries and museums. In addition to searching, you can browse by place, time period, topic, type of item, or language.

Digital Collections at Archives, Libraries, Museums & Organizations

Digital Collections of Performance Companies

Performing Arts Archiving Organizations and Resources