DANC 483: History of Dance II

Professor: Miriam Phillips
Librarian: Leahkim Gannett

This guide will assist you in locating resources for your DANC 483 research assignments. For additional assistance, please contact Leahkim Gannett, Reference Librarian, 301-405-9117, leahkim@umd.edu.

Most of the materials on dance are located in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library.

Hours of the Performing Arts Library.
Borrowing Materials from the Performing Arts Library.

Table of Contents

• Giordano, Ralph. Social Dancing in America. PA LIB REF GV1623.G56 2007

• International Encyclopedia of Dance. PA LIB REF GV1586.I586 1998 vols. 1-6

• Adamczyk, Alice. Black Dance. An Annotated Bibliography. PA LIB REF GV1595.A25 1989

• Forbes, Fred. Dance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1964-1982. PA LIB REF GV1594.F67 1986

Sometimes you will already have a journal article citation from your professor or a reference list. In addition, as you conduct your research, you will be making note of the additional resources (book, book chapter, journal article) you identify in the bibliographies, references, notes and footnotes of the sources you are using.

A quick way to determine if UMD has the journals you need, and what formats are availabe (paper and/or online) is to use the Article Search Box on the Research Port main page:

Search Tips: You do not need to fill out all the info. Use the JOURNAL NAME, plus the VOLUME and/or ISSUE numbers, if known. If not, use JOURNAL NAME, plus YEAR.

Sample Journal Citations:

• Azzi, Maria Susana. "Multicultural Tango: The Impact and the Contribution of the Italian Immigration to the Tango in Argentina." International Journal of Musicology 5 (1996)

• Viladrich, Anahi. Neither Virgins nor Whores: tango lyrics and gender representations in the tango world. Journal of Popular Culture 2006 39(2): 272-293.

• Viladrich, Anahi. Performing the Tango's Dual Life: Immigrant tales from the field. Women & Performance; 2005, vol. 14 Issue 28, p.105-110.

• Durbin, Paula. In the Embrace of the Tango. Dance Magazine; Feb2006, vol. 80 Issue 2, p17-18
  

Use the UM Libraries' Catalog to locate books and videos about your topic.

From the BASIC SEARCH page, you can look up materials several different ways. If you have a citation for a book or video, you can look it up by title beginning with... or by author beginning with...

Searching by Topic/Subjects:

• Use word/s anywhere or subject beginning with... with your search terms.

Sample Search Terms:

tango
ballet and (19th or nineteenth)
danc* and history and 20th
danc* and europe and 20th
(medieval or middle ages) and danc*
musicals and danc*
vaudeville and danc*
"hip hop" and danc*

Search Tricks!:

• Truncation: Using the * after a word-stem (danc*) will retrieve all words with danc as the root - ie: dance and dancing and dancer and dances... This will prevent you from doing multiple searches for similar concepts.
• Phrase Searching: Using quotation marks around a phrase ("hip hop") will ensure that they are searched together, as a phrase, and not as separate words.

Once you have identified relevant books, be sure to at the Library of Congress Subject Headings or LCSH. These headings appear toward the bottom of the catalog record and look like links. Follow them to discover additional books on your topic. You can also use the LCSH to refine your search, (narrow or broad) by adding the headings to your word search.

Using LCSH - Example: A search for books on the topic of the history of ballet, conducted using keywords: ballet and history. will retrieve over 200 items. Many will probably not be relevant.
Find one or two that are relevant, follow the subject heading/s, ballet - history; ballet-russia-history; ballet-history-18th century; ballet-france-history-18th century

Some sample Subject Headings:
tango (dance)
modern dance history
afro-american dance history
dancing england history / dance england history
dancing russian history
Using danc* as a subject word should retrieve all the materials that have been assigned dance or dancing as a subject heading.

Once you know the beginning subject words you can also search by: Subject beginning with...:
musicals
dance england
ballet history
Be sure to look at the sub-divisions: criticism; history; anthropological; country; philosophy...

Searching the Catalog for Media(videos, dvds):

Media titles are held in Nonprint Media Services on the ground floor of Hornbake Library as well as in PA Lib. Some dance films are also available through the digital Films@UM. These films are accessible from library computers and remotely via VPN.

In addition:

• Dance in Video Database provides streaming video.
• WAPAVA Collection, though mostly a theatre video collection, does contain dance performances. All WAPAVA recordings can be found in the library catalog.

Search Strategy:

Use the Advanced search and limit format to Videos/Films (all)
Once in Advanced Search use the strategies above.

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• International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance Covers all aspects of dance.

• Academic Search Premier Multidisciplinary, covers dance topics.

• America. History and Life
  Provides abstracts and some full-text of journal articles on United States and Canadian history. The history of dance is included.

• Historical Abstracts
  Provides abstracts and some full-text of journal articles on history outside of the United States and Canada. The history of dance is included.

• Jstor Electronic archive of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Includes complete runs of journals with full-text of all articles published prior to the most current five years.

• New York Public Library Dance Catalog
  Lists the holdings of the New York Public Library Dance Collection. The collection consists of books, periodical articles, video recordings, and other media. All forms of dance, from all cultures, in many languages are included.
  

THERE IS NO LINK FROM THE NYPL-DC

Search Strategies:

• Looking for materials on a subject, start by searching for your KEY WORDS in the ABSTRACT. Once you find an article you like, follow the SUBJECT TERMS to find other related articles.
dance and russia and history / dance and russia and 20th
renaissance and danc*

• Each database has its own methods for modifying your search. Most will let you sort your list of results by DATE, by AUTHOR, or by TITLE.

  There are many other databases to use depending on the topic, such as RILM or Music Index fir music. Explore the list of Academic Disciplines in Research Port to find other databases grouped by subject.
  

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• Catron, Louis. Theatre Sources Dot Com : a Complete Guide to Online Theatre and Dance Resources. REF PA LIB PN2052.C38 2001

• Evaluating Web Sites

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