UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Mapping European Performing Arts Databases: An Inventory of Online Historical Theatre Data Projects

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Mapping European Performing Arts Databases: An Inventory of Online Historical Theatre Data Projects
Over the last two decades, a growing number of databases have been published online that record historical information on the production, distribution and reception of performing arts. The aim of this contribution is to present a starting inventory of European performing arts databases that are available online, since no such overview exists to date. This inventory stems from a project carried out in 2018 at the University of Amsterdam, in the context of the digital humanities research program CREATE. 1 One of the goals of the project was to examine the potential of transnational and cross-sectoral cooperation on historical research into performing arts: can we connect datasets in a meaningful way to facilitate comparative and interdisciplinary research? The first step in this project has been the creation of an inventory of online databases on theatre, music and film. 2 This contribution focuses only on performance-related databases in the field of theatre and related art forms such as opera and music theatre, as these comprised the majority of our initial inventory effort. We are aware that an overview of performing arts databases will never be complete or even up to date, but we nevertheless do believe that our compiled overview can be a practical tool for scholars interested in theatre studies and the history of performing arts to start exploring various existing theatre data projects, and to potentially further extend this inventory in the future.
Several criteria were taken into account when selecting relevant data projects. The geographical focus was limited to Europe, 3 tying in with existing initiatives on a continental scale to make cultural heritage and data available for research and other uses, such as Europeana and the

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European research infrastructure DARIAH. 4 As can be seen in the project overview below, a distinction was made between a database's 'country of origin' (i.e. the country or countries in which it was established, by researchers and/or cultural institutions) and the 'geographical scope' (i.e. the country or countries covered by the collected data). The temporal scope roughly runs from 1600 until the present day. The final inventory nevertheless includes a small number of databases that cover earlier periods too, with one website (the APGRD Productions Database) even going back as early as the mid-fifteenth century in documenting theatrical performances of ancient Greek and Roman dramas, such as those performed in the ancient theatre of Taormina for example ( Figure 1). Besides these geographical and temporal selection criteria, it also proved necessary to define the term 'database'. In order to qualify for inclusion in the inventory, a project's data had to be openly accessible online, 5 either through a website or by means of downloadable files. Additionally, the data needed to allow for a minimal degree of searchability, either through particular interfaces and query functions, or by simply allowing users to click and scroll their way through the data records. 6 As the scatteredness of historical data projects precludes a linear search process, we adopted The data models underpinning the collected performing arts projects are usually governed by the basic ontological hierarchy of the 'work' ("concerns the elements that never change about a work"), 'production' ("concerns the team that put the work on stage") and 'performance' ("concerns the people on stage or in the orchestra pit who perform a certain production of the work on a particular day"), as the Royal Opera House Performance Database describes it. 12 Based on our explorations, we further distinguish two main types of data models among the performing arts databases: item-oriented and event-oriented. Item-oriented data models are structured around specific items such as venues (buildings, locations), 13  A side effect that we encountered during our effort of compiling performing arts databases was the confrontation with dormant, inactive or abandoned projects, which points to the pressing issue of preservation and curation of digital projects. In general, we can observe two types of institutional frameworks furnishing the data projects that make up our inventory. The majority of the collected databases are either produced within academic programs, often financed with (temporary) project funding, or are set up by particular theatre institutions to