Since the year 2000 theatre processes have turned digital. It affected the documentation of live performances. Today drafts of different versions of a play can be saved on Google Docs and edited by a range of different people; institutional mail archives can have several emails accounts at the organization; light design documentation is saved as digital files and theatre reviews are often presented in online blogs. The art form itself is ephemeral, but the digital documentation of different aspects of theatre includes ephemerality because it, unlike the paper documents is bound to a certain technology or platform that changes fast.
 
That gives theatre archives a new position. The archives today can move their acquisition politics to active digital deliveries from certain theatres and groups.
 
Digital format opens a range of questions for curators and archivists in the field of what is the best for concrete problems of saving and guarding the digital materials.

Therefor SIBMAS starts a working group on this topic.

All members of SIBMAS who have faced these problems of saving and guarding digital materials in the field of theatre/dance are invited to participate. As a participant of the group you have to engage actively in the work. The group will work with confidential materials and you have to agree to a code of conduct that will be presented at our first meeting.

ExCom Member in SIBMAS PhD Anna Lawaetz, Research Librarian and Curator at The Royal Danish Library is the head of the working group.
 
Send a short presentation to Anna Lawaetz alaw@kb.dk before 01.09.2019. In the email please describe some of the digital problems that you are faced with. Please be aware that the group is focused on born-digital material, not retro-digitalization.

The first meeting in the group will be via the internet and will take place during autumn 2019. The group will be meeting virtually every second or third month. If the interest in the working group is bigger than large sub-working groups might be established.

Knowledge from the working group will be shared with the rest of SIBMAS at the next Conference in Warsaw June 2-5 2020.