On June 30, 2019, the Museum of Performance + Design(MP+D)completed its year-long preservation project, More Life: Preserving San Francisco Bay Area Theater Recordings, funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and MP+D supporters. These grants supported the digitization of some of MP+D's most at-risk live theater video recordings, documenting performances and workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1976 to 2001. Over the course of the project, MP+D digitized 200 video tapes for long-term preservation and created catalog records for 175 recently acquired recordings. Among the significant works preserved were the world premiere of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Angels in America" by the Eureka Theatre; the 1977 production of Athol Fugard's "Sizwe Bansi is Dead", starring a young Danny Glover; American Conservatory Theater's 1987 production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom with Charles Dutton; and performances from several other San Francisco Bay Area theatre companies such as Magic Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Theatre of Yugen. Information about these productions is discoverable through their catalog records on MP+D's online catalog and WorldCat.org. Newly digitized works will be accessible for viewing via on-site workstations in MP+D's Reading Room. Please visit www.mpdsf.org for additional information.

Supriya Wronkiewicz

Project Archivist

Museum of Performance + Design

Read more from the Fall 2019 SCA Newsletter!

Join us for the webinar: ArchivesSpace and Airtable for Improved Workflow Management, Wednesday, December 11, 2019, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. The Archival Collections Management department at New York University Libraries recently implemented the cloud software Airtable for holistic workflow management to complement its use of ArchivesSpace as its system of record for archival holdings. This webinar, presented by Weatherly Stephan (Head of Archival Collections Management, NYU Libraries) and Rachel Searcy (Accessioning Archivist, NYU Libraries), will focus on the ways in which they use Airtable in conjunction with other systems to monitor backlogs, prioritize upcoming work, communicate the status of current projects to a broad group of stakeholders, and report statistics on their accessioning, arrangement and description, and other collections management activities. Register and learn more here.

The California State Library has begun work on a new website, Voices of the Golden State. This website will feature oral histories that recount California’s rich history and heritage. In focusing on California’s history, the ever-growing collection will especially highlight the state’s diversity. Additionally, it will be a platform through which oral history programs and archives can promote their work and collections. With this announcement, we hope you’ll consider contributing interviews to the site. To provide guidance to both potential contributors and users of the site, the Library developed a Statement on Diversity. Here’s an excerpt: 

As this page seeks to explore California’s rich diversity, we will strive to include interviewees of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds, economic backgrounds, immigration status, abilities, as well as voices from all the geographic regions of the state. Because California is one of the largest economies in the world, these interviews will reveal the multitude of industries that exist in the state, and the experiences of those who have worked in these industries. Finally, the interviews will reflect the importance of civic involvement and political action in California’s history and how Californians from many backgrounds have meaningfully engaged in this work.

Information on how to contribute interviews will be available closer to the site’s launch later this fall. There will not be a limit on how many oral histories a program or archive can contribute, but submissions will be reviewed and featured on a schedule. The success of Voices of the Golden State will rely on contributing programs opening their oral history collections. We hope you’ll join us in this endeavor.

Allison K. Tracy-Taylor

Project Lead, Voices of the Golden State

California State Library

Read more from the Fall 2019 SCA Newsletter!

The SCA Education Committee is pleased to announce the following workshop in Southern California: OpenRefine and International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), Friday, December 13th, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Brown Learn Lab, Mary Norton Clapp Library, Occidental College. This 2-part workshop will introduce participants to OpenRefine in the morning session, and to the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) for archival materials in the afternoon. Register and learn more here.