Archives of the Dance (20)

The archive of the National Resource Centre for Dance (NRCD) has a wealth of materials covering over a century of dance in the UK and abroad. Although most relate to theatre dance, these materials document the breadth of dance practice, in keeping with the centre’s remit to be a national support service for dance education and research. Like many performing arts collections, the NRCD’s archive holds a range of material types: all varieties of printed items, including books, periodicals, programmes, posters, newspaper cuttings, publicity, and scrapbooks combining these; items created by hand, such as manuscripts, letters, drawings, costume designs, and notation scores; photographs; film and video; audio recordings from open reel to CD; objects; costumes; and digital items. The NRCD’s archive has two strands: the special collections and the core reference collection. The special collections concern the work of an individual, company, or organisation, and have been donated as a cohesive entity. The core collection is all other materials, which may come in as single items, as a miscellaneous batch of materials, or as part of the NRCD’s off-air recording and newspaper clipping procedures. These resources, which are acquired solely through donation, are housed in a secure storeroom and are brought to the study room upon request. Before being made available to researchers, they undergo processing, which involves preservation and cataloguing. Routine preservation procedures involve transferring paper-based items to acid-free archival stationery (folders, boxes, etc.), placing photographs in protective transparent sleeves, and making ‘viewing’ and ‘listening’ copies of most of the videos, films, and audio materials. Since 1995, items have been catalogued on a custom-made electronic database using Microsoft Access, but in 2001, this data

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