Music Library Association Conference 2023

Too often the theatrical canons of Europe and the United States have monopolized our curricula and collections, sidelining the traditions, practices, and innovations of theater from Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Oceania. In this session, we will discuss ways to assess, expand, and strengthen theater collections to encompass material from these essential regions. As a member of the team developing a new four-course Global Theater History curriculum for the School of Theater, as well as the librarian whose resources support that curriculum, I conducted a micro collections assessment, examining which of our current resources support the new curriculum. In the process, my colleagues and I scrutinized existing systems of collection development that reinforce older Anglo-Western models for collections and explored ways to work within those systems so that the collection would not be detrimentally limited in scope. After assessing the collection and interrogating established systems, we implemented a variety of different methods to bolster the collection with new and retrospective resources.

Session attendees will consider how their stakeholders might engage with the global theater canon, gather methods and resources for assessing and expanding the geographic and cultural scope of their collections, and discuss how to circumvent the limitations of inadequate collections systems. This session offers the unique opportunity to explore the critical issues of exclusionary Anglo-Western and European collection assessment and development practices through the lens of global theater history and also provides a glimpse into the recursive nature of developing a collection for a department whose curriculum is going through a radical transformation. Through this process of reflecting, assessing current collections, examining existing systems, and gathering new and more inclusive methods of development, performing arts librarians can be leaders in the movement towards rectifying the lopsided theater history narrative of our universities and institutions.