International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Theater Museums and the Internet

Possibilities and limitations from the perspective of myself as a vendor and a user

Lennart Forslund, Research assistant

Umeå University, Drama-Teater-Film Dept.

Winds of Change - New Technology

21st International Congress

Helsinki, 31 August - 6 September 1996

I will, first of all, briefly introduce myself. My name is Lennart Forslund, and I come from the Drama-Theater-Film Department at Umeå University in Sweden. I've been working with theater repertoire and theater databases on computers for some twenty years. During this period I have participated in two major research projects dealing with Swedish theater during the last century.

I have, at the moment, the repertoire of all theaters in Gothenburg 1910-1975, all theaters in Stockholm 1910-1970, the Royal Swedish Dramatic Theater 1788-1988 and Umeå 1907-1940 (work in progress) on my computer.

My aim is to build a national database with theater repertoire accessible for everyone who wants to access it. This, of course, implies that available resources and competence are linked together towards one single system when documenting theater productions. The main point with this database will - as before - continuously be in the direction towards historic theater repertoire in Sweden rather than actual productions.

I co-operate since several years ago with the theater museums in Stockholm and Gothenburg. We hope thatin the future we can help the Drottningholm Theater Museum in Stockholm with the documentation of actual theater productions given in the western and northern parts of Sweden. We also hope to co-operate with the National Swedish Touring Theater and their publishing firm Entr頨in English, Entrance) that comes with annual books on theater productions in Sweden, and the Swedish Theater Union - Swedish ITI, where I am a member of the Theater Documentation Group. The latter try to bring about a co-operation between theaters so they use the same documentation data program.

I am now very eager to adapt my documentation routines to the international development and I think that SIBMAS here works as a proper place to disseminate new documentation methods.

First, let's look at my work. With the computer and the equipment I have at hand there are really no limitations to what I can put into my theater database. I can make hyperlinks from the repertoire to reviews and theater articles, pictures and photos, video recordings and film sequences, all of which reside on the hard disks on my computer. Then I can turn my computer into a WorldWideWeb-server accessible to everyone via the Internet.

And then, let's look at it from the perspective of a theater museum. They can move in the same direction, and have their materials accessible and on-line; but the big problem is that they have to have a fairly powerful computer to be able to form these databases, with an audio-card, a mpeg-card, a 24-bit graphic card in the computer, with 3-D-functions and the ability to rotate pictures etc. etc.

The first question is: has the museum got the money to buy this equipment and, if so, do they have the competence to maintain it and keep it up-to-date. The second question will of course be: has the user got a comparable personal computer when he connects to the museum via the Internet. Very few people outside the universities and public administrations have got the necessary equipment today, and I think that - even if it is difficult to look into the future - this will be the case, even henceforth. It is, and it will be, an asset for a limited number of people.

Another reflection: you can as a user never - no matter what computer you have bought - have the same experience in front of a computer screen compared to walking into a museum, have a look around and (sometimes) hold an object, feel it, and be sensible of the scents and the smells there, feel the space and the orders and suborders of the objects, stroll around in the room, meet other people and discuss what you see and what you feel etc. Nothing of this can you do sitting in your chair and looking at a 15 inch small coloured screen.

Finally, let's look at what the museums have brought to their home-pages on the Net, what kind of information you can have from them. I ran into something called the Museums Pages the other day when surfing the Net. From this place I randomly went to a couple of museums and had a look. First I came to the Tate Gallery and this is what I saw (picture). A couple of pictures, the address to the museum, telephone number and fax number to the museum and a short description of what to find inside the museum. Then I looked up Current Exhibits In Spain, containing 5 pages similar to this one (picture). With names of the museums, telephone numbers and fax numbers, and when they are open. Those were the types of home-pages I found on the Net, and I was actually disappointed. I had hoped to find lots of pictures from within the museums, maybe a couple of short film sequences, even sounds recorded, but there were no such information. And I asked myself , will there ever be?

And - if so - this rises some questions to be discussed:

Are we ruled by the technics? Is it the mere possibility to combine text, pictures and film that makes us do so, or do we start with the question what we want to achieve and then ask ourselves what technics will lead to the goal?

What fee do I have to pay to connect to the museum? Is it possible at all to charge for the possibility to have this electronic information via the Internet? Will anybody pay for it?

Will it be possible to count the visitors to the museum? Are they who come to the museum via the Internet really visitors and form a basis for the authorities when they distribute their grants among the museums?

How will users easily find the museum's home-page on the Net among all the other home-pages?

21st Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas96/hels11.html