A New Way to Discover Playscripts: Using Tagpacker to Better Explore Collections

Abstract

The previous quotes are a few actual requests from drama students at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), who were trying to find playscripts in the UCI Libraries collection. Like the more than 77% of other libraries that don’t have a separate playscript collection, browsing for playscripts in UCI Libraries is difficult since they are interfiled with other materials such as novels, poetry, and literary criticism in the P (Language and Literature) area. Because physical browsing is difficult due to the volume of other materials as well as their size (it’s so easy for those slim playscripts to almost magically become invisible when compared to their much larger novels and criticism book neighbors), students instead need to rely on the library’s catalog to find these items.