Subject Guides: Theatre, Film, Television & Interactive Media: Resources

Film, video and theatre streaming

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) This link opens in a new window
You will need to register for an account the first time that you access Box of Broadcasts.

Please note that you may only access and use Box of Broadcasts in the United Kingdom..
Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is an on demand TV and radio service for education. Users can record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels and access an extensive archive of programmes already available. Users can also create clips from programmes and compile playlists.

Please note that you may only access and use BoB in the United Kingdom.

For help with this resource, take a look at the BoB FAQs.

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BFI Player This link opens in a new window
11,000 free to view archive films from the BFI, national and regional archives including shorts, features, and 120 years of Britain on film.

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Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
Provides an insight into theatre from production to performance through access to streaming video. The material in Digital Theatre Plus includes:

- Productions (high-definition films of leading British theatre productions).
- Behind-the-scenes documentaries and interviews with professional theatre makers.
- Study guides written by practitioners and academics.
- Teaching support demonstrating practical techniques.
- Curated collections of filmed performance from around the world.

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Journals

All journal titles are listed on YorSearch, and can be found by searching the journal title.

If you don't have a specific title in mind, you can browse journals in your subject area on Browzine. Journals are organised by field of research, such as:

Browse all Film and Media Studies

Film Studies

Radio

Television

Search for books and journals on YorSearch

Video-based online resources

Video-based resources

BBC Motion Graphics Archive
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Over 3,000 searchable digitised BBC title sequences

British Council Film Collection This link opens in a new window
An archive of over 120 short documentary films made by the British Council during the 1940s and designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played.

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BUND: British Universities Newsreel Database This link opens in a new window
160,000 digitised records of British cinema newsreels, 80,000 digitised production documents, online texts, a Who's Who of British Newsreels and much more, dating back to 1910.

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Dance in Video (Alexander Street) [accessible until 31st January 2025] This link opens in a new window
Productions and documentaries by influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Included are classic performances from top ballet companies; experimental works from up-and-coming dance troupes; documentaries by and about leading choreographers; videos on dance training; and other items covering a wide range of 20th century dance styles.

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National Archives: Focus on Film
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This site presents film as a historical source and considers its advantages and disadvantages as evidence for the past.

The archive contains a range of original footage from the twentieth century as well as some reconstructions of earlier periods of history. All clips have full background information and can either be viewed online or downloaded for free.

Opera in Video (Alexander Street) This link opens in a new window
Gives access to some of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the worlds best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a works importance to the operatic canon.

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Screen Online This link opens in a new window
Screen Online is no longer being updated and film clips may not be available, for access to film clips see the free collections available via BFI Player.
Screen Online is a website covering the history of British film and television and Britain's social history as revealed by film and television. The site contains video clips from the collections of the British Film Institute National Film and Television Archive, stills, posters and press books and several hours of recorded interviews with film and television personalities.
TRILT: Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching This link opens in a new window
TRILT includes selected terrestrial television listings from 1995 onwards and complete schedules from 2001 for over 330 different UK channels, including digital, satellite and cable television, local and national radio stations and regional variations. TRILT includes details on programmes coming up for transmission at least 10 days in advance and also automatically flags which programmes may be obtained via the BUFVC's Off-Air Recording Back-Up Service.

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Yorkshire Film Archive Online This link opens in a new window
A film archive which provides access to moving images documenting Yorkshire life, landscape and culture from the 1890s to the present day.

Audio-based resources

Archival Sound Recordings This link opens in a new window
This website contains over 28,000 recordings from the British Library Sound Archive. Recordings can be browsed by collection and a keyword search is also available. Recordings can be downloaded and used for the purposes of teaching, learning and research.

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Classical Music Library (Alexander Street) [accessible until 31st January 2025] This link opens in a new window
Classical Music Library is a database of streamed recordings with more than 50,000 tracks from over 30 labels. The repertoire ranges from vocal and choral music, to chamber, orchestral, solo instrumental, and opera.

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Commercial Radio Archive This link opens in a new window
To access recordings enter "University of York" and select it from the list then log in with your York IT Services username and password.
Gives access to archives of Independent Local Radio from 1973 to 1996 including the: Independent Local Radio Programme Sharing Database; London Broadcasting Company/Independent Radio News Archive; Independent Local Radio Central Southern Archive.

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Other relevant websites for TFTi

BBC Shakespeare Archive This link opens in a new window
To access the archive you will need to register for an ERA account at the site using your University of York email address. You can then login using your York email address and ERA password.
A collection of programmes and photographs from the BBC's Shakespeare archive. It includes Shakespeare’s plays, poems and sonnets, documentaries, interviews and over a thousand stills of classic Shakespeare productions, as well as entertainment programmes referencing Shakespeare.
BFI Filmography This link opens in a new window
The BFI Filmography includes detailed information about UK feature films released in cinemas from 1911 until the present day. The data can be used to investigate the history, production and context of film in the UK.

The Filmography is a dynamic resource and the underlying data is constantly being reviewed and updated.

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Web of Stories This link opens in a new window
Formerly known as: Peoples Archive
An archive of online movies featuring detailed life stories of the world's greatest thinkers, creators and achievers narrated in one-to-one interviews. The life stories are arranged into seven sections covering Arts, Film, Literature, Masters, Medicine, Politics and Science and are accompanied by transcripts with complete bibliographies or filmographies, external links to relevant websites and illustrations. Web of Stories is a dynamic resource with new life stories contiually being added.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Activities also include preservation of the moving image
British Council Film Collection
Over 100 documentary films produced during the 1940s, around the theme of Britishness.
Broadcasters' Audience Research Board
The BARB site offers a number of ways to access television audience figures. Both historical data and the latest audience figures are available as weekly and monthly viewing summaries, based on the Individuals aged 4+ audience category. Students are permitted to include in their work the data featured on this website (but the information should not be used in any wider publication without your own BARB subscription).
Internet Archive
Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, IA is working to preserve multimedia materials ranging from the Prelinger Archives, to dance materials and text.
Motion pictures of the Edison Companies
This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other Edison related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles.
The Poster Database
Large collection of film and theatre posters available to download to registered users with a (free) account.
Scripts On Screen
This is a website which aggregates scripts from several sources across the internet.
Silent Era
Excellent resource for information on the silent era.

Text-based resources

American Film Institute Catalog (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
AFI Catalog is a national filmography documenting the history of American cinema. It currently covers the years 1893-1974 comprehensively, with additional records covering selected major films from 1975 onwards.

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American Film Scripts Online (Alexander Street) This link opens in a new window
The University has access to Volume I.
Accurate and authorised versions of more than 1,000 copyrighted screenplays covering a period from 1903 to 2009. The screenplays are accompanied by detailed information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. Facsimile images for more than 500 of these screenplays are also available. Many of these scripts have never been published before and are not available online anywhere else.

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American Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
A collection of full text archives of American newspapers with page and article facsimile images. The University has access to: Atlanta Constitution; Atlanta Daily World; Chicago Defender; Chicago Tribune; New York Times; New York Tribune; Washington Post.

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ASSIA (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
ASSIA (Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts) indexes around 650 English language social science journals. Subject coverage includes social services, health, employment, ethnic studies, education, criminology, and related areas.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Cambridge Companions Online: Literature and Classics This link opens in a new window
Essays on major authors, periods and genres, written by experts in their fields. For the author Companions, each writer is placed in literary and historical context; their major works are analysed, either in separate chapters or grouped according to theme, and their influence on later writers assessed.

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Drama Online (Bloomsbury Online) This link opens in a new window
You will not have access to all the content in Drama Online, please see More info for details of what is available.

If Drama Online does not recognise you as University of York then select the Log In option in the top-right of the page and under Helpful Hints select Shibboleth Login Page
Drama Online gives access to the full-text of over 2,000 plays from the very earliest Greek works right up to the present day, including the most current editions from the Arden Shakespeare series, contemporary plays from Nick Hern Books, Aurora Metro Books, and Oberon Books, selected works of commentary and criticism and hundreds of production stills from the Victoria and Albert Museum Performance collection. There are also videos of plays in performance from the National Theatre and Stage on Screen and two Shakespeare masterclasses.

The University has access to the following:
- Core Collection of plays
- Nick Hern Books Collection (titles published up to 10th April 2019)
- Aurora Metro Books Collection
- Oberon Books Collection
- National Theatre Collections 1 & 2 (Video)
- Stage on Screen Collection (Video)
- Shakespeare in the Present (Masterclass Video)
- Shakespeare's Heroes and Villains: Steven Berkoff (Masterclass Video)
- Maxine Peake as Hamlet (Video)

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Early English Books Online [EEBO] (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Contains over 100,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).

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Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is the most ambitious single digitisation project ever undertaken which offers wide access not only to a century of the nation's intellectual heritage, but also works from earlier periods which were valued and printed or reprinted during the eighteenth century.

A library of over 180,000 eighteenth-century printed books, with more than 33 million scanned facsimile pages. Each title has a full citation record from the English Short Title Catalogue and is fully searchable - including full-text and illustrations multi-disciplinary. A research resource for all disciplines.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Eighteenth Century Drama This link opens in a new window
Documents from the John Larpent Collection, an archive of almost every play submitted for licence between 1737 and 1824. Larpent was the English Inspector of Plays from 1778-1824 and preserved plays submitted for licence under the 1737 Licensing Act.

The collection includes over 2,500 plays, epilogues, prologues, addresses and songs submitted for licence along with the diaries of Larpents wife and professional collaborator Anna, recording her criticisms of plays, and hundreds of further documents including playbills, theatre records and correspondence between key theatrical figures.

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Gale Digital Scholar Lab This link opens in a new window
For access you will also need to login at the Gale Digital Scholar Lab site using your University credentials or a Google or Microsoft account.
Digital Scholar Lab provides tools for exploring and analysing the University's collections of Gale Primary Sources. Using Digital Scholar Lab you can:
- Search across the University's Gale Primary Sources collections.
- Create custom content sets containing as many as 10,000 documents.
- Analyse content sets with built in text analysis, mining and visualization tools. Analysis methods include: Named Entity Recognition, Topic Modelling, Parts of Speech, Ngram, Sentiment Analysis and Clustering.
- Organise and manage your research.
- Export tabular data, and visualisations in standard formats.
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Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Allows simultaneous searches across all of the University's Gale primary source collections:
- 17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
- 17th & 18th Century Nichols Newspapers Collection
- 19th Century UK Periodicals Series 1: New Readerships
- British Library Newspapers (Part I to VI)
- Daily Mail Historical Archive
- Economist Historical Archive
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
- Financial Times Historical Archive
- Illustrated London News Historical Archive
- Listener Historical Archive, 1929-1991
- Mirror Historical Archive, 1903-2000
- Sunday Times Historical Archive
- Telegraph Historical Archive
- Times Digital Archive
- Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
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International Index to Performing Arts Full Text This link opens in a new window
- see entry for Performing Arts Periodicals Database.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
For alumni access please the Virtual Library JSTOR section on Alumni Learning.
A digital archive collection of core scholarly journals starting with the first issues (many of which date from the 1800s). See JSTOR's online help guide for further information.

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LION - Literature Online This link opens in a new window
This resource is a searchable, online library of over 300,000 works of English and American poetry, prose and drama. It also provides access to a growing collection of online journals, reference works, author biographies and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL).

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Literature Criticism Online - Drama Criticism & Shakespearean Criticism This link opens in a new window
The full-text of the first 45 volumes (1991-2012) in the Drama Criticism series providing in-depth coverage of over 150 dramatists and their works drawn from the literatures of all eras and all parts of the world, plus Shakespearean Criticism volumes 26 to 143.

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Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new window
Mass Observation was a pioneering social research organization whose papers provide insights into the cultural and social history of Britain from 1937 to 1972. The University has purchased the complete Mass Observation Online collection giving access to:
- File reports 1937-1951.
- Publications by Mass Observation between 1937 and 1966.
- Topic Collections, 1937-1965 (87 collections).
- Day Surveys 1937-1938.
- Diaries 1939-1967.
- Directives 1939-1955.
- Worktown Collection
- Support materials (essays, maps, a bibliography, a chronology, and photographs).
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Media History Digital Library This link opens in a new window
A collection of classic periodicals covering cinema, broadcasting, and recorded sound available as digital facsimile images.
Nexis This link opens in a new window
Personalisation is available via the link above.

Alternative link without personalisation if you have problems with the link above (please clear the cookies and cache in your browser): Nexis.
Nexis is a major source of global news and business information. It provides full-text access to over 34,000 publications, with more than 12,000 news sources including UK daily and regional newspapers, current affairs magazines, and professional journals. Updated daily; back issues archive varies by title.

Nexis also includes 80 sources of company information, plus thousands of biographies of government officials, politicians, celebrities, investors and business contacts.

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Performing Arts Periodicals Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Formerly International Index to Performing Arts Full Text
A major database of the journal literature on the performing arts and covers a broad range of areas including dance, film, television, drama, theatre, stagecraft, musical theatre, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, comedy, broadcast arts and performance art. Performing Arts Periodicals Database includes indexing and abstracts for more than 240 international titles and the full text of articles from over 80 journals.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE, founded by Johns Hopkins University Press, is a database of over 380 full text scholarly journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences from over 70 (mainly university press) publishers.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Records of Early English Drama (REED) This link opens in a new window
Records, drawn from historical documents, containing evidence of drama, secular music, and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until 1642.

This online version of REED includes records published from 2017 onwards. The REED website has links to PDF versions of some earlier print volumes of REED. To find print volumes available in the library please search YorSearch.
Science Direct This link opens in a new window
The world's largest full-text scientific database of journals in the life, physical, medical, technical and social sciences.

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Screen Online This link opens in a new window
Screen Online is no longer being updated and film clips may not be available, for access to film clips see the free collections available via BFI Player.
Screen Online is a website covering the history of British film and television and Britain's social history as revealed by film and television. The site contains video clips from the collections of the British Film Institute National Film and Television Archive, stills, posters and press books and several hours of recorded interviews with film and television personalities.
Shakespeare Collection This link opens in a new window
Please see the sites below to access other content that used to be in the Shakespeare Collection:

Shakespearean Criticism volumes 26 to 143 - Gale Literature Criticism
Shakespeare Collection Periodicals - Gale Literature Resource Center
Twayne's English Authors Series - Gale Ebooks
William Shakespeare : A Documentary Volume - Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography
This collection gives access to over 200 prompt books (annotated working texts of stage managers and company prompters) from the 17th to 20th centuries, the diaries of Shakespeare enthusiast Gordon Crosse documenting 500 UK performances from 1890 to 1953, the First Folio and Quartos, editions and adaptations of Shakespeares works from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, more than 80 works Shakespeare is thought to have been familiar with, as well as works composed by Shakespeare's contemporaries.

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Statista This link opens in a new window
Please note that the University has access to the core Statista database. You will not have access to Statista Global Consumer Survey and Statista Company Database.
Statista is a comprehensive statistics platform giving access to over 1.5 million data sets (with more added daily) and revenue forecasts for over 400 industries. Data and statistics are aggregated from 22,500 sources on 85,000 different topics. Updates to data sets, depending on content type, occur monthly, quarterly, six monthly and yearly. Statista also includes many thousands of downloadable reports, studies and dossiers.

The University has access to the core Statista database. You will not have access to Statista Global Consumer Survey and Statista Company Database.

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Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science provides access to the Science Citation Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

For help using this resource for bibliometrics see Bibliometrics: a practical guide.

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Business related resources for BCI

Statista This link opens in a new window
Please note that the University has access to the core Statista database. You will not have access to Statista Global Consumer Survey and Statista Company Database.
Statista is a comprehensive statistics platform giving access to over 1.5 million data sets (with more added daily) and revenue forecasts for over 400 industries. Data and statistics are aggregated from 22,500 sources on 85,000 different topics. Updates to data sets, depending on content type, occur monthly, quarterly, six monthly and yearly. Statista also includes many thousands of downloadable reports, studies and dossiers.

The University has access to the core Statista database. You will not have access to Statista Global Consumer Survey and Statista Company Database.

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Nexis This link opens in a new window
Personalisation is available via the link above.

Alternative link without personalisation if you have problems with the link above (please clear the cookies and cache in your browser): Nexis.
Nexis is a major source of global news and business information. It provides full-text access to over 34,000 publications, with more than 12,000 news sources including UK daily and regional newspapers, current affairs magazines, and professional journals. Updated daily; back issues archive varies by title.

Nexis also includes 80 sources of company information, plus thousands of biographies of government officials, politicians, celebrities, investors and business contacts.

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Business Source Premier (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
The full text of articles from almost 8,200 journals, including more than 1,100 peer-reviewed business publications. This includes the Harvard Business Review back to the first issue in 1922, and most other journals included back to 1965. The database also includes other sources of full text information such as country economic reports from the EIU, and detailed company profiles for the world's 10,000 largest companies. Additional full text, non-journal content includes market research reports, industry reports, country reports, company profiles and SWOT analyses.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Emerald Journals This link opens in a new window
Gives access to the full text of over 100 Emerald titles covering management, library and information management, applied science and technology.

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Performing Arts Periodicals Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Formerly International Index to Performing Arts Full Text
A major database of the journal literature on the performing arts and covers a broad range of areas including dance, film, television, drama, theatre, stagecraft, musical theatre, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, comedy, broadcast arts and performance art. Performing Arts Periodicals Database includes indexing and abstracts for more than 240 international titles and the full text of articles from over 80 journals.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

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Theatre, Film, Television & Interactive Media

Resources

Finding Resources

Film, video and theatre streaming

Film, video and theatre streaming

Journals

Journals

Video-based online resources

Multi-Media Resources

Video-based resources

Audio-based resources

Other relevant websites for TFTi

Websites

Text-based resources

Databases and Text-Based Resources

Business related resources for BCI

Business Resources for BCI