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Online Resources
Libraries And Research Institutions
A comprehensive list of dance libraries, archives, and collections in the United States and Canada – regardless of whether they have sites on the World Wide Web – is a component of the Web site of Preserve, Inc.
American Dance Festival Archives The ADF Archives, a multiformat collection, documents the origins of the festival from its origins in 1934 at Bennington College in southern Vermont to its current season in Durham, North Carolina.
American Vaudeville Museum The AVM was established in 1982 as a nonprofit membership organization. Based in Boston, it maintains an attractive Web site that is designed to serve as a research center for vaudeville, burlesque, variety, musical revues, musical comedies, and early sound movies. Benefits of membership include a subscription to Vaudeville Times, issued quarterly in print.
Australia Dancing A directory of Australian dance resources, across a variety of media, that are currently available in major Australian research collections. The directory was created and is maintained by Keep Dancing!, a cooperative project funded by the Australia Council for the Arts involving ScreenSound Australia (formerly the National Film and Sound Archive), the National Library of Australia, and Ausdance, a service and advocacy organization devoted to dance in Australia.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France Founded by Louis XI (r. 1461-1483), France's national library is perhaps the leading library in Europe. Its Web site, available in either French or English, contains a wealth of information about the library, its collections, and its services. Among its constituents are the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal and the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra. Online catalogs of the collections are provided.
Center for Black Music Research Devoted to research, preservation, and dissemination of information about the history of black music on a global scale, the CBMR is a research unit of Columbia College Chicago. Major areas of the Web site are Publications, Outreach & Performance, Research and Resources, and Musical Styles/Genres. Other locations on the site provide information about the center, its bookstore, and jobs in the field. Also featured are discussion forums on scholarly issues, resources issues, and social issues and politics in black music, among other topics.
Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Located in Flagstaff, Arizona, the CCDR is the home of the collections and archives of Gertrude Prokosh Kurath, Eleanor King, and Joann W. Kealiinohomoku. Its library of more than eleven thousand shelved items is open to the public only two days a week, but the library catalog is searchable online at any time. The Web site is managed by Joann W. Kealiinohomoku.
Dance Collection Danse Dance Collection Danse, which holds "Canada's largest collection of dance-related documents," is pleased to announce the launch of its Nancy Lima Dent web exhibition. Dent was one of Canada's important twentieth-century modern dance choreographers. Her aesthetic was politicized by her leftist sympathies, her belief in the importance of socially aware art, and her sense of nationalism.
Dans Museet Stockholm's Dance Museum is home to the Rolf de Maré Study Centre, which contains a library, a video collection, and a sizeable archive of photographs and printed matter from Sweden and abroad. Its Web site, available in either Swedish or English, provides contact information for librarians, archivists, and the receptionist, with whom reservations for seating in the study center must be made.
The EServer Based at the University of Washington, the EServer has been publishing texts online since 1990. It has more than 225 members, 21,500 files in the arts and humanities, and over 550,000 users each week. As a member-run cooperative, it shares most of its files with the public, others only with its members. Visitors can search the site for topics of interest, read from any of the collections, communicate with the editors and each other, and join the public mailing lists.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini Located on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the Cini Foundation comprises seven institutes devoted to the arts in Italy. The major holding of interest to dance historians is the Milloss Collection, which contains books, photographs, personal papers, music scores, and other memorabilia collected by Aurelio Milloss. The Web site of the Cini Foundation is posted in both Italian and English.
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center The Theater Arts Collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has large holdings of original costume and stage designs from the Broadway stage. Dance is represented with some sixty thousand photographs and files on choreographers and dancers. Popular entertainment includes collections on vaudeville, circus, magic, puppetry, and Wild West and minstrel shows.
Harvard University Library Harvard's library system comprises more than ninety distinct libraries. This home page provides visitors with rosters of the libraries by name, by faculty (school), and by subject. Many have Web sites that describe their collections and services. The Harvard Theatre Collection at the Houghton Library and the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library are among them.
Jacob's Pillow Archives The archives of the famed Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, located in Becket, Massachusetts, are open to the public. Holdings include rare documents and artifacts in dance history. The Web site, which focuses on the festival itself, includes general information on the archives and a link to the Pillow's finding aid, which is a component of the Dance Heritage Coalition site.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute The TRI at Ohio State University is administered jointly by the University Libraries and the Department of Theatre. It collects, preserves, maintains, and makes accessible research materials pertaining to performing arts, with a primary emphasis upon live performance.
Laban Centre London The library and archive of the Laban Centre London constitute one of the largest and most varied research collections on dance and dance-related activity in the United Kingdom, covering all aspects of dance in a variety of formats and languages. All books, music CDs, and videos are catalogued on computer. Visitors pay a small fee for each session of reference use.
Library of Congress America's national library, and the largest library in the world, containing massive multimedia collections of cultural and historical significance. The Library of Congress is the national leader in preservation practices and cataloging standards, and it was a pioneer in providing electronic access to knowledge and information via its World Wide Web sites. During the past fifteen years, the library has greatly amplified its program for acquisition of dance materials.
Lila Acheson Wallace Library The library of the Juilliard School in New York contains an extensive collection of musical scores; books on music, dance, drama, and academic subjects; sound recordings; and videocassettes. Materials circulate only to Juilliard students and faculty. Outside users may make appointments to view materials unique to the collection.
National Center for the Performing Arts The NCPA was established in 1966 in Mumbai (Bombay), India, to preserve and promote India's rich cultural heritage in classical and folk music, dance, and dama. Its simple Web site describes its numerous components and activities.
National Resource Centre for Dance The NRCD is based at the George Edwards Library on the University of Surrey campus at Guildford, near London. It is a nonprofit national archive, center for research, and information service for dance and movement. Founded in 1982, the NRCD has a core reference collection, an archive, a publishing program, and a short course program. Especially useful is its information service, which includes a listing of calls for papers at upcoming conferences. .
The Newberry Library This Chicago institution is an independent research library concentrating in the humanities. It houses an extensive, non-circulating collection of materials spanning the history and culture of western Europe from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century and the Americas from the time of first contact between Europeans and Native Americans. Among its strengths are its special collections on the history and theory of music, which excel for the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The world's most extensive combination of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections in its field. Materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. The library is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non- book materials: historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, theater programs, posters, and photographs. An essential resource for anyone with an interest in the performing arts.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Web site of Harvard Universityˇs Peabody Museum now includes online features that provide the virtual visitor with a broad sense of the collections and the research of the Harvard faculty and museum staff.
Royal Academy of Dance The dance materials in the library and the archives of the RAD constitute a comprehensive reference source. The collection includes more than five thousand books, the photographic archive of G.B.L. Wilson, more than one thousand Benesh Movement Notation scores, and a vast quantity of international dance magazines, programs, and souvenir brochures from the 1920s onward. The catalog is now being digitized. The Web site gives information on services, access, and circulation policies.
Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center Owned by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and operated by Circus World Museum Foundation, this library houses a vast collection of materials on the American circus, including Wild West shows. Its Web site gives information on its holdings and the services it provides to researchers.
San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum PALM is an independent research center for the performing arts. Its dance collection includes books, periodicals, videotapes, biographical files, company/subject files, personal papers, archives, scrapbooks, and oral history files. It is open to the public without charge.
The SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions The SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions lists over 7000 international institutions with material relating to the performing arts (theatre, opera, music, ballet, film, circus, radio, television, cabaret, pantomime). Edited by Paul S. Ulrich, this well-organized site offers a keyword index of holdings, as well as contact information including email and homepage addresses.
Theatre Museum The Theatre Museum is Britain's National Museum of Performing Arts. Located at Covent Garden in London, it is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its collections are the largest of their type in the world, comprising documents, artifacts, and works of art that record the history of the performing arts in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present. All the live performing arts are represented, including drama, dance, opera, musical theater, circus, puppetry, music hall, and live art. The Web site is a gateway to discovering the contents of this vast treasury.
Vaudeville Memories This interesting site provides biographies of many stars of the vaudeville stage, a glossary of slang terms, lists of theaters, and some entertaining music as well as a page of research sources and tips on tracing your ancestors' vaudevillian history.
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Last updated 28 January
2003
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