Research Library Information
Searchable Online Collection
Educational Curriculum

Eugene O'Neill Foundation's Research Library

The foundation maintains a number of “collections” relating to O’Neill. These are gradually being entered into the library’s computer and can be searched in great detail. Where applicable, the computer entries are accompanied by actual pictures or sound recordings. Please note that these are all “works in progress.”

Books: O’Neill’s personal books (many autographed), and books about O’Neill and his works. Also books about other playwrights and the theatre in general. The collections include those of Travis Bogard, Horst Frenz, Sophus Winther and others.

Carlotta’s Diary: handwritten entries covering the period during which the O’Neills resided at Tao house. The pages are being converted to computer text which can be searched.

Letters: Correspondence to and from the O’Neills.

Media: Newspaper and other clippings. These have been converted to computer accessible text using optical character recognition (OCR) and are fully searchable.

Memorabilia: Various items relating to the O’Neills. These include such items as Carlotta’s ivory cigarette holders, Eugene’s undershorts, etc.

Photographs: Original photographs relating to the O’Neills and his plays.

Playbills: Playbills from O’Neill productions.

Records: O’Neill’s personal phonograph record collection. All labels have been scanned and most of the recordings have been transferred to the computer for on-line listening.

Detailed access to these collections is only available on-site at Tao House in the foundation library. Those wishing to use the library must make an appointment by calling (925) 820-1818.

Note on our Searchable Online Collection:

These are presented in much less detail than that available on the library computer and are in summary form only. You enter a set of keywords to search, and you will be returned entries, each one of which contains ALL your keywords. The order of the words is not important, nor is capitalization. Do not include any punctuation. Note however that you must enter o’neill, not oneill.

Only the first 50 entries are returned. If these don’t cover your requirements you should modify your keywords to be more explicit.

Examples
Category: All Categories. Keywords: Desire Under the Elms

You will receive up to 50 matching records in all categories, typically in Books, Media, Photos and Playbills.

Keywords: “elms under desire” will produce the same set of results.

Changing the Category from “All” to “Media” will confine the search to just those entries found in the Media Collection.

Keywords: “review of desire under the elms” will produce a subset of the above search results i.e. just those retrieved entries which also contain the word “review”.

If a retrieved entry contains a camera icon, you can click on the accession number and view any associated graphics. These might include the actual envelope and pages of a letter, the labels from a phonograph record, or the actual photograph associated with the retrieved entry.