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  • Friday, January 18, 2019 - 9:00am to 5:00pm

Kislak Center, 6th Floor of Van Pelt Library


The Kislak Center at Penn Libraries is pleased to announce an upcoming conference next Thursday and Friday, which is free and open to the public on January 17th and 18th:

Digital and Archival Approaches to Theater History

As the capstone conference for the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Philadelphia Playbills Project hosted by Penn Libraries, this conference will address the challenge of reconstructing performances of the past.  There are a broad range of materials from playbills to props, scrapbooks to photographs of actors, that survive as documents of past performances. How do we take these disparate materials and form a picture of what a night at the theater may have been like for someone of a past era? This conference looks at how scholars, librarian, archivists and digital humanists use and organize these materials, and how new digital tools and approaches are transforming the way we can understand the history of the theater.

Please visit the conference website for more information and registration: www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/playbills.html


Schedule: January 18th
All events take place in the Kislak Center Pavilion on the 6th floor except for the 1:30 Pop Up exhibit in the Lea Library.

9:00-9:30 Registration, coffee, and snacks

9:30-10:45 Session I

Paul Ulrich, Society for Theater History Berlin
Theatre Almanacs and Journals as Sources for Documenting German Theatre in the 19th Century

Helice Koffler, The Shubert Archive
The People Behind the Records: Launching the Early Employees Project

10:45-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:15 Session II

Doug Reside, New York Public Library
Title TBA

Matthew Wittmann, Houghton Library, Harvard
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Playbill

Karin Suni, Free Library of Philadelphia
From Card Catalog to Digital Database: The Philadelphia Play Index Project

12:15 - 1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:45 Session III 
Pop up exhibit and discussion with materials, Lea Library

2:45 - 3:00 Coffee Break

3:00 - 4:15 Session IV

Michael Gamer and Scott Enderle, English Department and Penn Libraries, University of Pennsylvania
Title TBA

Sarah Hovde, Folger Shakespeare Library
How to catalog 100,000 playbills

Laura Aydelotte, Kislak Center, University of Pennsylvania
The Philadelphia Playbills Project Year One

4:15 - 4:30 Final Remarks

4:30 - 5:00 Wrap up and final exhibit viewing