These titles are available in print, microform and electronic formats. It also has a variety of critical material discussing performance as an aesthetic event and a social and rhetorical act. The Nonprint Collection in the Undergraduate Library has audiotapes and videotapes of various performances and of some master classes teaching performance techniques. The Manuscripts Collection houses thousands of oral histories that can be used for performances or in studies of performances. A broad range of ethnographic works are also available in the Library.
Studies dealing with Latin America, Oceania, and East Asia are particularly rich.
To aid in writing, designing and directing performances, the Library acquires manuals and other materials about these areas. Faculty, students, and other library users may want to consult library collections in related disciplines, particularly Dramatic Arts and English and American Literature for potentially relevant information. The Library acquires materials to support rhetorical studies, both current and historical. Primary sources for rhetorical studies include not only books, however, but a large number of newspaper backfiles in microfilm. More recently, the collections have expanded to embrace not only print media, but also videotapes of films and television shows, and audiotapes of radio, most of which are housed in the Nonprint Collection of the Undergraduate Library, and electronic resources, including World's Greatest Speeches , a database of over 400 of the greatest speeches in world history.