The Yale University Library system has a large variety theater-related materials scattered in different collections, including the Drama Library, Manuscripts and Archives, the British Arts Center, the Slides Library, and the Beinecke. These materials are of interest for theater historians generally, and there is specific interest for theater history and drama classes at Yale. They are also interesting from a collection development perspective since there is often a high degree of historical, logical and aesthetic interrelation among items. Many items, however, are fragile and unique. Consequently it would be highly valuable to digitize some of these materials to aid both their preservation and their presentation.
As a pilot project to help us investigate the possibilities and issues that a large digitization project of this type would encounter, the proposed SCOPA project will explore format, metadata, interactivity, and database issues by digitizing a limited number of items which will (1) give us experience with materials of varying types (mainly visual and textual, but possibly also audio) because theater materials exist in many formats and media, and (2) if possible, provide an example of materials that are logically or historically tied together (e.g. a discussion of an event, and photos and artistic renderings of it), so that we can analyze methods of connecting them electronically. We do not plan significant database development during this pilot project, though we will explore the options offered by Luna Insight, Extensis Portfolio, and other delivery software currently used at Yale, building on the experience that members of the Yale community have with these resources and emphasizing how choosing delivery software will affect production.
The precise methodology will be affected by an option being worked out now. The first step in the project is to inventory the theater-related materials scattered across campus. If a suitably skilled student can be found soon, this will be done during November and December 2000 using departmental funds, before the SCOPA grant begins. Otherwise it will be the first stage of the grant.
The next step is item selection. Members of the Yale theater, drama and arts community have already noted some potentially suitable materials, including images and documents of use for Theater Studies 110; a collection of materials on Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold at the Drama Library; the extensive Crawford Theater Collection in Manuscripts and Archives; and items in the slide library, the Beinecke, and the British Art Center. Appropriate items for the pilot project will be identified more precisely once the inventory has been completed.
Visual materials will be scanned into TIFF, and then converted to other formats as appropriate. Large items such as posters, and three-dimensional objects such as costumes, may need to be scanned from slides (3D scans will not be attempted). We hope to digitize one or two texts as well (preferably prompt scripts, which exist uniquely and present important challenges for digitization), creating both images and text files encoded in XML following Text Encoding for Interchange guidelines. However, the standard tag set for drama in TEI is not quite adequate for marking up multi-leveled texts such as prompt scripts, which have notes written by the stage manager or director; the pilot project will thus offer an opportunity to explore XML's extensibility by adding and/or modifying tags, using a prototype already drafted.
Finally, the results will be mounted on a server, initially on ordinary web pages, but also if possible in test databases under delivery software such as Luna Insight or Extensis Portfolio.
January-February 2001
: Inventory potential items for digitization.March-May 2001
: Select items for digitization.June-August 2001
: Digitize visual materials.September-November 2001
: Digitize textual materials, including markup in XML.December 2001
: Evaluate results, identify technical and procedural problems.This pilot project will prepare the ground for a larger theater materials digitization project, which will extend the benefits of resources such as Imaging America to a further group of students and professors at Yale and beyond.
| Student work hours (materials inventory): 6 hrs/wk x 6 weeks x $8.60/hr | $309.60 |
| Student work hours (XML markup): 6 hrs/wk x 8 weeks x $10.00/hr | $480.00 |
| Digitization-related expenses | $400.00 |
| Total | $1,189.60 |