Welcome to my draft, pod people!

Hi Chelsea, Your "drafty draft" was very interesting to read, especially having never read anything about this type of archives. A few comments/suggestions: 1. Might be good to start off by providing the reader a brief definition of performing arts archives, to immediately orient the reader. Also, the introductory paragraphs have lots of great info, but may benefit from being broken up a bit (differenet subsections, or paragraphs). Or maybe pull some of that info out to make completely new sections. 2. I think adding some media would be great, especially media from performing arts archives. I agree with Mariko that your topic lends itself especially well to the use of media. Sorry, I don't have any other ideas for you though! 3. The Challenges section might benefit from being broken up into sub-sections (funding, access, lack of professional archivists, maybe different sections for the different types of archives) 4. I think the Characteristics of PA Archivists is an interesting section, but could definitely use another source or two to make it more well-rounded. Though I'm guessing there aren't to many out there.. 5.Great idea to include case studies! Helps to solidify the concept of a performing arts archives. I think the Dalhousie one could benefit from some sub-sections, and could perhaps be shortened a bit overall. The elements of this that jumped out to me as most valuable were the brief history of the archives you provided, the discussion of their digitization project, explaining how they provide advice to theaters on how to manage their records, and talking about some of the challenges they face.

~Katie

Hi, Katie!

Thank you so much for your comments, which are very helpful! I think based on your and also Lisa's comments, I should maybe just move the section about the characteristics of performing arts archivist into the "About Performing Arts Archives" and make it just a few sentences. As you suggested, I don't thnk there are other articles specifically on this topic, and basically all that Marini is getting at is that they perhaps have more subject knowledge, have to be more proactive about seeking out materials, and are more engaged with their user communities / more focused on outreach.

Also an excellent point about breaking up my existing sections with more sub-sections. I think where I am going wrong is treating this like a normal paper as opposed to a wiki...too much academic writing may have ruined me forever. And obviously another big weakness of my writing generally is a tendency to be a bit long winded (I know...shocking, right?). I'll see if I can trim down a bit and break things up a bit with more subheadings.

I still haven't been able to go through all of my other sources that came in from ILL, so there will be more content to come...eventually!