If libraries were created to steward the written word, then where do records of the performing arts reside? This website provides an overview of the different media formats that document performing arts history and lists the archival collections where significant holdings of each format can be found. The inspiration for this guide came from the struggles of its creator to find scrapbooks of British provenance to study for her doctoral dissertation due to the centrifugal nature of performing arts research, in which materials pertaining to a specific subject might be dispersed across repositories. By collating these materials, this website aspires to be a resource for researchers and creative practitioners to identify and select collections to consult and for LAM (libraries, archives, & museums) professionals to identify peer institutions with shared collecting strengths for the purposes of reference assistance, collection development, and professional collaboration. The format descriptions are also intended to be a resource for anyone looking for a short introduction to the nature and history of any one of the various materials produced during the creation or spectatorship of performance.
This guide indexes collections covering theatre, dance, opera, and performance art located in repositories in the United States and United Kingdom. Indexed collections are restricted to materials pertaining to the UK and US. To be selected for indexing, a collection does not have to consist exclusively of that format but does have to have a significant amount of examples of that format (e.g., multiple file boxes or bound volumes).
This website was created by Victoria Wiet, Ph.D., for LIS 488 (Technology for Information Professionals) at Simmons University, where Dr. Wiet is an MSLIS candidate. You can learn more about her research and experience on her personal website. While the coding, format descriptions, and initial collation of archival collections were all created by Dr. Wiet, this website also aims to be a living resource, and future collation is intended to be developed with others. If you know of a collection not currently listed and think it should be added, please reach out to her via this contact page!