Ever think of exploring history by examining the dialogue it inspired on stage and in song? You may not think of the performing arts when you think of doing American history research, but you should. And there’s no better place to find out about the performing arts in America’s past than at the New York Performing Arts Library.

Dance, theater, film, arts administration, music, recorded sound, videotape: you can find it all here. The library has the largest collection of performing arts information in the world, and it’s free and open to all. The majority of it even circulates, which means you can actually take it home for a while.

Okay, so performing arts and history – the two don’t exactly seem to mesh, right? Wrong! You can use the performing arts to study any period of American history. And I mean ANY period of American history. For example, when antebellum territories were voting on statehood, abolitionists traveled westward and performed songs, hoping to persuade voters to become a free state instead of a slave state. The Performing Arts Library has lots of information on them. You can also go there to learn about subversive performance such

as Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty, a play in which (among other things) taxi drivers struggle, but finally arrive at the decision to strike for higher wages despite their fears of being replaced or labeled as communists. The library even has old newsletters promoting the blacklisting of performers suspected of being communists. There’s also a lot of information on gay and lesbian theater that goes way back. And if you’ve ever wondered about the origins of rap and hip-hop, or ska, reggae, and Calypso, wonder no longer.

Okay, so maybe you’re not interested in music or the stage. Well, the library also has a lot of material on early film. After all, the film industry did spend its first thirty years in New York and its first seventy years being promoted from New York. And before TV commercials, presidents promoted themselves through songs and jingles—you can find campaign songs here. The library even collects rock and roll.

The museum collects nationally as well as internationally, in a variety of languages, so you can trace the evolution of different American traditions in entertainment, music and theater. There are over 500 periodicals, and the circulating division holds the only open-shelf arts administration section in the New York area. So if you ever decide to study how the theater district made it in New York, you can explore topics like the theater buildings or all the money behind them.

One great place to start is the digital library collection, http://www.nypl.org/digital/, where you can find images from the New York Public Library on the web. The online resources include curated-groups of pictures such as the Schomburg’s 19th-century African-American image collection, as well as material from different online exhibits. The collection will also include 3-D images from those binocular-like “stereopticons,” including major world cities, the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, exotic animals, abbeys, and casualties of wars.

You’ll also find pictures, music, CDs (which you fortunately can listen to in the library or borrow), DVDs and videos (which you unfortunately can’t view in the library but can borrow), and textual material like scripts, song folios, and show tunes. Probably the only media the library doesn’t have are costumes and musical instruments, although it sometimes borrows them for an exhibit, such as one on Jim Henson that included several of his puppets. I would definitely recommend checking out the exhibits that the library puts together. They are very well done.

You might consider starting your research on the website’s homework help page, http://teenlink.nypl.org/HomeworkHelp.cfm or the New York Performing Library’s own URL, http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html. You can access on-line databases, search engines, and other library help as well as peruse past exhibits. However, you should keep in mind that some finding aids and Internet search engines are only available from computers in the performing arts library. In fact, there are 200 public access computers in the Performing Arts Library that are set aside for you to do research on, in addition to several for personal use. And when you print from these research computers you don’t have to pay. (But those other personal use computers are another story—you have to pay to print from them.) And by the way, they have areas to plug in laptops and the library is now wi-fi throughout the building.

Now, the Performing Arts Library is one of the New York Public Library’s four research libraries—but it’s unique in also being a branch library. So bring both your New York Public Library card and a Researcher’s Access Card.

So what kind of resources does the non-circulating portion of the library have? Well, start by telling the librarian what you’re interested in or looking through the ton of reference books they have. On the open shelf reference, for example, you can look through encyclopedias, biographies, discographies, alphabetical biographies of released films, and newspaper clippings on drama, as well as magazines that include Spin, Downbeat, Rolling Stone, Latin Salsa, Classical Music, and even the American Organist.

Getting the regular library card is easy: show up at any branch library with proof that you live in New York State – a driver’s license, a school ID, a postmarked piece of mail addressed to you, etc. Getting the Researcher’s Access card, necessary for research in the non-circulating library, is also relatively easy. You fill out an application at the service desk or online at http://www2.nypl.org/access2/. Bring a photo ID for a permanent access card; without it, you can get one that only lasts a couple of days. Both library cards cost nothing except a little hassle, and they’re worth it.

Normally, concerts in New York cost quite a lot, but at the New York Performing Arts libraries there’s no fee for any of their programs, which include concerts. Plus they even have a speaker talk about the pieces being played. The library also hosts stage readings and panel discussions on contemporary performing arts topics. Past events have featured playwrights, dance historians, choreographers, composers, actors, and members of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, and New York Philharmonic. Don’t think you can’t write a history paper on the performing arts? You can. And this place is where you come to research it.