International Theatre Collection Seminar—Introduction

Abstract

I felt for some of the librarians and archivists who didn’t have a chance to speak their part at the last event – who were told in some ways that their ordering destroyed the pleasure and surprise of the archival visit. And I feel I should say that the same ordering systems, while never free of the historical institutional biases that created them also work to prevent an elitist consumption of cultural heritage – the balance of preserving for other and future users and allowing free access to information is a balance, not an either or choice – but it is a choice that can be struck differently and always of course, more imaginatively.