President’s Report
President’s Report for Spring 2015
The TLA Board met in New York City on February 20, 2015. We had a productive meeting and successfully connected with our members on the west coast using good old fashioned technology – the telephone. It was my pleasure to welcome our new members Tanisha Jones and Joseph Talley and to welcome back Diana King and Doug Reside.
The action never stops with TLA!
New Appointments
I am delighted that Eric Colleary has taken on the role of webmaster and co-chair of the Website and Editorial Committee. Charlotte Cubbage has decided to step down from her work as Book Review Editor. Many thanks to Charlotte for her wonderful work and we look forward to the new round of reviews for this summer. I have appointed Emily Witkowski to this post. There will be separate post for Emily’s introduction. Joseph Talley has agreed to serve as chair-elect of the Publications Committee. He is working closely with Leahkim Gannett who will be stepping down at the end of this year. Many thanks to Leahkim for her terrific work with this committee. I am delighted to announce that Laurie Murphy will take over the leadership of our Membership Committee. Many thanks to Beth Kattelman for her wonderful work.
ASTR TLA Conference – Portland
Matt Dicintio and Noreen Barnes received great response to their call for papers and are now in the process of finalizing the panel for the TLA Plenary. Matt is also serving on the conference planning committee and will be investigating other possible activities for TLA and ATAP. Angela Weaver is looking into a tour of the Portland Center Stage. The TLA hosted tours of historic theatres have been successful at ASTR — we had great response in Baltimore and we hope for the same in Portland.
Book Awards
Diana Bertolini and Tiffany Nixon are leading the work of this committee. For the full update, please see the posting.
October Awards Event
Mark your calendars for October 16. Following our Annual Business Meeting, we will host our Awards Event. The event will be held at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. More information on the event to follow. And, there will be a PAR Giveaway!
Symposium Planning
Leahkim Gannett and Morgen Stevens-Garmon are co-chairing the planning committee. This promises to be a wonderful event – the focus is on fringe festivals. We have an excellent planning committee in place. The event will likely be scheduled for October 2016 in New York City.
Publications
We have a number of PAR volumes in process and under review. Kenneth Schlesinger is editing a timely volume entitled State of the Profession: Performing Arts Librarianship in the 21st Century. Future volumes under review with the Publications Committee include a revised proposal for theatre architecture. We are also planning a volume on exhibition planning for performing arts collections. The volume on Digital Humanities is under review and we are in discussion to publish the proceedings of the SIBMAS TLA Conference.
Website and Editorial Committee
New members to the committee include Rachel Smiley and Selena Chau. The committee is working through best practices for publishing and news coverage. We hope you are enjoying the new website.
Ad Hoc Committee on PAR
I have charged this committee to review various publishing models for PAR. There has been ongoing discussion by he Board to launch PAR as an open access publication. The Board will take up the matter at the June meeting.
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
TLA helped to host a Wikpedia Edit-a-thon in February at the invitation of Rachel Mattson, Manager of Special Projects in the archives at LaMaMA. The event was held at Columbia University (many thanks to the library) — we had a good turnout including several experienced contributors to Wikipedia. The focus — entries related to the performing arts. I hope to host more of these!
Get Involved
If you would like to be more involved with TLA, please do not hesitate to contact me. TLA offers wonderful opportunities for professional development.
— Nancy Friedland