Faber & Faber

A new partnership to provide online access to the world’s finest drama from the last two and half thousand years.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and Faber and Faber Limited are pleased to announce a new partnership to develop a digital content platform for libraries, educators, students and researchers to be sold via subscription and perpetual access to academic institutions.

Drama Online, launching in October 2012, is the ultimate online resource for plays, critical analysis and performance. Featuring the pre-eminent drama lists from Methuen Drama, Arden Shakespeare and Faber and Faber, Drama Online will offer a complete digital library of the most studied, performed and critically acclaimed plays from the last two and a half thousand years. 

From the works of Aeschylus in 5th Century BC to the present day, Drama Online will provide unique access to the finest drama literature. Titles will include the most highly regarded scholarly editions of Shakespeare – the Arden Shakespeare Series; realist works from Ibsen and Chekhov; foreign works in translation; comic masterpieces from Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward; modern classics by leading writers Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Edward Bond, Alan Ayckbourn, Christopher Hampton, Brian Friel, John Osborne, David Greig, David Harrower, April De Angelis, David Hare, Anthony Neilson, Shelagh Stephenson and David Eldridge among many others; the very latest contemporary writers including Polly Stenham, Katori Hall and Lucy Prebble and the works of theatre companies such as Complicite and Filter. The collection will be continually updated with the very latest writing from new and established writers.

In addition Drama Online will offer expert guidance in the form of scholarly notes, annotated texts, critical analysis and contextual information. A regularly-expanding portfolio of performance and practitioner texts from theory to backstage and acting guides coupled with images, video and audio material will make this an essential study tool meeting the full range of drama teaching needs.

Drama Online presents unique functionality not found in any other platform. Users will be able to search full text and across genres, periods, authors and themes; analyse lines per character; view a rehearsal grid for each play; find monologues; print lines for a character; export extracts with citations in place; save and share materials.

Drama Online is an advanced study tool for students and scholars developed in full consultation with academics, researchers and librarians.

Key features and benefits:

• Integrated access to hundreds of plays and reference works
• Regularly updated with contemporary plays and study materials
• Expert guidance with annotated texts, scholarly editions and critical material
• Powerful full text searching and advanced search options
• Filtered browsing across authors, periods, genres and themes
• Personalisation features: annotate, save, share, extract, citation options
• Simple navigation and intuitive user interface, easily accessible from VLEs
• View cast size and the number of lines per character
• Rehearsal grids illustrate when characters appear in scenes
• Quick access to `part books’: lines for individual characters
• Option to turn textual notes on or off
• Detailed monologues and audition speech search
• View parallel texts on screen
• Simple navigation and intuitive user interface, easily accessible from VLEs
• Comfortable on screen reading experience complete with pagination, stage directions and lineation in place
• Cross referencing via DOI (Digital Object Identifiers) and OpenURLs
• Industry standard access: unlimited concurrent access via IP recognition, ATHENS/Shibboleth, library cards, and username and password for remote users.
• COUNTER compliant usage statistics and library branding
• Extensive online help and excellent customer and technical support
• Building on functionality from Bloomsbury’s award-winning Berg Fashion Library www.bergfashionlibrary.com

Nigel Newton, Chairman and Chief Executive of Bloomsbury Publishing described the resource as a “Very exciting and truly unique way of providing access to the finest drama literature. Many iconic works in this collection have never been made available digitally before and we are delighted to be working in partnership with Faber. ”

Stephen Page, Chief Executive and Publisher of Faber and Faber noted: “This partnership between two independent publishers will make available a unique and extraordinary resource for the study of drama and we are delighted to be working closely with Bloomsbury to develop it over the coming years.”

For more information visit www.dramaonlinelibrary.com

To express an interest in Drama Online for your institution, please email drama.online@bloomsbury.com

For inquiries for UK-based media please contact:

BLOOMSBURY
Jenny Ridout, tel: 07730 204 181 and email: jenny.ridout@bloomsbury.com
Jonathan Glasspool, tel: 02077580214 or 07738916105 and email: jonathan.glasspool@bloomsbury.com

FABER
Alex Holroyd, tel: 020 7 927 3885 and email: alex.holroyd@faber.co.uk
Rachel Alexander, tel: 07980 712113 and email: rachel.alexander@faber.co.uk

For inquiries for USA-based media please contact:

Ilise Levine, tel: 646-307-5703 or email: ilise.levine@bloomsbury.com

NOTES TO EDITORS:

For logos and playwright photographs, please contact: Sophia Blackwell, tel: +44 (0)20 7 758 0269 or email: Sophia.Blackwell@bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc – Bloomsbury Publishing is a leading independent publishing house with companies in London, New York, Berlin and Sydney. Its founder and Chief Executive is Nigel Newton. Its four divisions include:

Bloomsbury Academic and Professional Publishing – Bloomsbury Academic specialises in the humanities and social sciences, and will be publishing online the digitized edition of the Winston Churchill Archive in 2012. The division includes Berg, Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare. Bloomsbury Professional leads in UK law and tax.

Bloomsbury Information – includes a number of information databases for electronic as well as print publications. Publications include The Encarta World English Dictionary, The English Language Teaching Database, The Macmillan English Dictionary, Business: The Ultimate Resource, and others. Bloomsbury also provides management services for Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, a division of the Qatar Foundation.

Bloomsbury Adult Publishing – a substantial list of successful authors including Khaled Hosseini, William Boyd, Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, Elizabeth Gilbert, Richard Ford, David Guterson, John Irving, Jay McInerney, Ben Schott, Anthony Bourdain, William Dalrymple, Ben Macintyre, Dava Sobel, Mark Kurlansky, Chelsea Handler, Heston Blumenthal, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and recent Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson. The trade division also features significant reference projects including Wisden, Who's Who, Reed's Nautical and Whitaker’s.

Bloomsbury Children's Publishing – a highly successful list including authors such as J.K.Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Debi Gliori, Alyxandra Harvey, Carrie Jones, Shannon Hale, Louis Sachar and Benjamin Zephaniah.

Faber and Faber – Founded in 1929 by Geoffrey Faber, Faber and Faber remains one of the UK’s leading independent publishing houses. Faber publishes Fiction, Non-fiction, and Children’s books alongside its garlanded lists of Poetry, Drama, Music, and Film. It has been the publisher of twelve Nobel laureates for Literature, among them Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Seamus Heaney, Orhan Pamuk and Mario Vargas Llosa, and six Booker Prize-winners. Under its innovative Faber Finds imprint it has made rich list of out-of-print titles available once again.
In 2011 Faber and Faber was named Ingram Independent Publisher of the Year award at the Book Industry Awards and Trade Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards.

Faber Academy – The Faber Academy offers a dynamic programme of creative writing courses in London, Dublin, Glasgow and Sydney consisting of courses in novel writing, non-fiction, poetry and plays, led by the best practitioners in their field.

Faber Digital – Faber Digital has a remit to innovate in publishing. To date it has been nominated for a BAFTA for its groundbreaking Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone for iPhone and won the Futurebook Award for Digital innovation at the Book Industry Awards 2011 for Solar System for iPad. Faber Digital is the division responsible for the Drama Online project within Faber and Faber.

Faber Factory – Faber Factory is a fully comprehensive digital service that offers text digitisation, files storage, distribution and ongoing support to independent publishers to enable them to develop a digital publishing programme and participate in the rapidly growing e-book market.