1. Creating a Theatre Collection
Sarah L. Whybrew
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Good Morning. My name is Sarah Whybrew and I am the Digital Initiatives Librarian at Otterbein. Today I am going to share with you how we created a digital theatre collection in our IR. I am going to run through some back ground information and then will show you the actual site and walk you through it.

2. Why create this collection?
Project History
Why create this collection?
Theatre Advisory Board
New Department Chair
Building awareness for the Digital
Storage space issues on our servers
This project came about as the result of a dedicated alum named Mark Peters who was in Otterbein's Theatre Program in the 1960's. He has converted thousands of negatives into digital images over the past 10 years. I joined the Theatre Advisory Board in 2016 partly because of my own interest in theatre but also because we like to have a liaison from the library to all of our academic and administrative departments on campus. At those meetings, Mark would frequently present a slide show of pictures from older shows that he had put together, and the board members would all say, “ Gee I wish these could be seen by more people! I think they would really like it”. 
I of course thought, "This would be perfect for the Digital Commons!"
I spoke with our archivist because the majority of the artifacts are housed in the University Archives which are located in our library. He had approached the chair of the Theatre Department in the past but hound him to not be in favor of the project. The next year, he retired! And we got a new chair who was very interested in sharing this history with others.

3. Otterbein University’s Department of Theatre and Dance
5 Main Stage Productions Each Academic Year
70 + years of materials
Over 4,000 Images
Otterbein University’s Department of Theatre and Dance
5 Degree Programs/ Recruitment
1. Otterbein’s Department of Theatre and Dance offers 5 degree programs: BA in Theatre, BFA Design & Technology, BFA Acting, BFA Musical Theatre, and a Dance Minor.
Extremely Popular with Alumni and the Community
Summer Theatre

4. Collaboration Between Departments
Department of Theatre and Dance
University Archives
Alumni Association
Marketing IT
Library
Outside Vendors

5. Set Up Considerations Were there any copyright issues to consider?
Which items to Include?
Were there any copyright issues to consider?
To Flip or not to Flip?
How to structure the collection in the repository
The location of the collection was debated since it could be argued that it would fit under Archives or the Theatre and Dance Department. Ultimately we created a dedicated community to it and linked to it from the front page. We chose to first divide the community into 5 distinct collections: The Alumni Newsletter, the Productions by Year, The Annual Brochures, An Image Gallery, and then faculty work and student work. Because of the large size, we further divided the productions collection into decades and academic seasons within that. The Otterbein Summer Theatre Productions had their own collections as they are somewhat unique and employ equity actors.
Where to build the structure in the repository.
Could Everything be Open Access?

6. Which Items to include? Programs Images from shows
Ads places promoting the shows
Theatrical reviews of the shows
Director’s Notes
Candid's from season
Complaint letters from patrons

7. Copyright Concerns Release forms were signed by all students
Images owned by Otterbein per photographer’s contracts
Newspaper ads and Reviews

8. An additional 195 shows from 1967-2018 for Otterbein Summer Theatre
Size of Collection
321 Shows from
An additional 195 shows from for Otterbein Summer Theatre
Over 4,000 images in black & white prints, color prints and digitally in flickr.

9. To Flip or Not to Flip?
Current users of ISSUU.com – strictly for flipping technology.
Some software required a programmers ability to set up and manage and I did not have that background, nor did we have an IT person on staff at the library.
Some options were simply cost prohibitive.
Some of the options we researched and explored:
Flipping Book
Internet Archive
Xerox FreeFlow
We are in the process of building a new website and it has a wordpress plugin available called Flowpaper. Hoping that may be our long term solution.

10. Scanners After initially using a flatbed copier/
scanner we purchased a SCANNX Book Scanner
That Scanned, OCR’d and uploaded to our
OneDrive Accounts.

11. Staffing/Hours Involved
2 Students From Spring of 2017 – Summer of 2016
and 2 volunteers
1 Digital Initiatives Librarian
1500 Paid Hours in last 16 months
1800 Volunteer Hours over past 10 years

12. Master Spreadsheet Portion

13. Demo the actual site.