Earlier this year Dr. Allen Lanham, Dean of Library Services, and Todd Bruns, Institutional Repository Librarian for Eastern Illinois University’s The Keep, approached the Theatre Arts Department to learn about the works that they would most like to showcase. The chosen collection was a wonderful historical archive containing programs, photos, reviews, and stage and set designs from 1940s campus productions.
Todd chose to organize this unusual collection of materials by production rather than by document type. This, however, made the decision on how best to curate the collection challenging. Here is how Todd described the issue:
Some of the materials were very visual and would not be well-served by the most standard structure to showcase text. The image gallery structure doesn’t quite fit either because it wouldn’t do justice to the range of materials in the collection. I brought this problem to my Consulting Services rep, who suggested using a structure that was originally created to showcase books. We now have all of their productions organized by production and by decade from the 1940’s through today. We think it looks great and the department is thrilled.
You can view the entire collection of Theatre Arts productions here.
EIU Theatre Arts Department Productions of the 1940s