Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship
Theatre Library Association is proud to announce that Abigail Garnett, an MLS student at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science, is the first recipient of the Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship. TLA, with generous support from Alexander Street Press, endowed the inaugural Brooks McNamara Scholarship to recognize the achievements of a new member of the performing arts library and archival profession.
Brooks McNamara – beloved theater historian, scholar, educator, and mentor – was Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and founder of the Shubert Archive. The Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship acknowledges the outstanding professional accomplishments of promising students currently enrolled in MLS or archival training programs specializing in performing arts librarianship.
Applicants were required to submit an essay on the topic, From Legacy to Frontier: The Future of Performing Arts Librarianship.
Abigail Garnett wrote, in part:
Performing arts libraries are sustained by a fascination, on the part of both patrons and librarians, with the layers of meaning surrounding a performance. Those layers of meaning are manifested in the physical artifacts and ephemera that librarians traditionally seek to gather and preserve. These objects, much like the catalog entries that describe them, are nevertheless incomplete representations. There remains, then, the ongoing challenge of guiding patrons through a network of references that are often several degrees removed from the original object of interest.
The specific challenges of presenting, preserving, and making performing arts materials accessible also provide unique opportunities to explore innovative technologies. Taking advantage of a long history with special collections and archival materials, libraries can now generate increased interest in their materials through blogs, online streaming, and social media. As demand increases for unprecedented ease of access on the heels of these new developments, collections focused on the arts are uniquely suited to carving out their own place within the online conversation.
Congratulations, Abigail!
2011 Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship Award Committee: Nancy Friedland, Chair; Phyllis Dircks; Francesca Marini; Karen Nickeson
For more information about the Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship, contact Nancy Friedland
Last updated: November 9, 2011