Sixty Years of Collectors and Collecting
by Claire HudsonMarch 2008
THIS EVENT HAS TAKEN PLACE
Claire Hudson, President of SIBMAS.
Claire Hudson is Head of Collections Management for the Theatre Collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, and president of SIBMAS (International Association of Libraries & Museums of the Performing Arts, founded in 1954).
She discussed with panel members, and also with users of theatre collections, the situation in the Britain of 1948: Gabrielle Enthoven's collection at the V&A, Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson's amazing house in Sydenham, and the unexpected pleasures of visiting St James's Palace to look at the Lord Chamberlain's playscripts.
The big questions which the evening sought to answer:
How have things changed for the collector and for the researcher?
What has improved?
What challenges do we all face now?
Claire Hudson (30 minutes) Introduction: How has the landscape of theatrical collecting changed over the last 60 years?
Improvements:
- More organisations archiving performance and to a very professional standard:
- Computerisation.
- Internet availability of catalogues, databases and full text documents and images.
- Digitisation of documents and images; uniting of collections in a virtual environment rather than physically.
- Standards for cataloguing, so that collections can be compared and linked electronically.
- Communication - networking.
- Mapping of UK theatre collections.
- Use of video to record performance.
- Greater recognition of the importance of intangible cultural heritage.
Challenges:
- Material is now 'born digital'
- How to respond to electronic samizdat such as informal reviewing sites, blogs.
- How to preserve material in digital or magnetic formats.
- Archives have become very expensive and collectable.
- How to sustain electronic projects.
- How to stay in touch with what our users want and need, and indeed, who they are.
- As ever, to try to predict what future users will want.
- Fragmentation of archiving through internet publishing.
- SQORM factor (Sheer quantity of research material).
- Resistence to the idea of archiving a live activity like performance.
Richard Mangan (15 minutes)
What made Ray and Joe collect?
What were their methods?
Examples of special triumphs?
How would they react to the current M&M Collection?
Further comments on changes, improvements, challenges.
Eileen Cottis (15 minutes)
Changing experience of being a user of theatrical archives.
How have conditions changed?
Further comments on changes, improvements, challenges.
Claire then summed up and answered questions from the audience
(It is hoped that a recording of this presenation will be available online soon.
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7th June 2008 |
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