This special edition on theatre archives has had a particularly
lengthy period of gestation. First suggested by Ellen Pearson,
the Associate Librarian for Information Services, the guest editor
began to call for articles as long ago as the Fall of 1985. Potential
contributors, being chiefly theatre people, were hard pressed
to find the time and, if they were faculty or librarians, it was
no less of a problem, except that the latter were more likely
to remain in one place.
Meanwhile, new theatre collections kept arriving in the archives
thanks to the boundless energy of our "field man", Professor
L.W. Conolly, and this material must be processed and new contributors
must be sought. Processing, indeed, has been a Herculean task
- with particular reference to the Augean stables. Drama students
Denise Dicken, Nancy Carrick, Patricia Koenig, Lisbe Rae, Claire
Loughheed and Elaine Baetz have all lent a hand; as have student
assistant Parvin Jahanpour, alumni volunteers Elizabeth Waywell,
Dick Ellis, and Guelph Collegiate Librarian Bill McKinnie, for
whom it was a practicum for a library course in archives administration.
Thanks to a SSHRCC grant, Librarian Sarah Funston-Mills was hired
to work full-time on building up the theatre archives database,
to deal with the myriad conservation challenges of a variety of
formats and conditions and generally to cope, as only she could,
with a mountain of material and a steady stream of theatre related
queries.
From a tentative start at theatre collecting in 1975 with the
acquisition of papers of English theatre historian and guru Walter
MacQueen-Pope (see Collection Update no.3, 1981) to the
present 1700 linear feet of well-stocked shelves, Guelph has become
a major centre for theatre research. As an ever-active Drama Department
continues to provide new acquisition possibilities and co-operative
arrangements develop with other centres, such as Metropolitan
Toronto Library's Theatre Department and the Stratford Festival
Archives, may the gods decide that what is past is prologue to
a continuing venture in preserving the theatre record at Guelph.
Note 2005: some minor alterations in text have been made, e.g.
captions for illustrations or locations, to reflect library changes since 1988 and
to provide for web formatting. As well, in 1999 the library formally adopted the name "L.W. Conolly Theatre Archives" in recognition of the work done by Professor Conolly in establishing and guiding the development of theatre collections.
