Total Theatre Magazine are putting together a small team of volunteers to work on the second phase of the creation of the Total Theatre Archive, a major project on which they are working with us, The Keep at the University of Sussex and Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance (London).
They have completed phase one and the full collection of 25 years of print magazines have been scanned and converted to PDFs.
In the next phase of the process there are two main tasks:
1.Extracting text from the PDFs using OCR (optical character recognition) programmes.
2.Data entry of the text onto the new Total Theatre Magazine archive website, which is being created and managed by MES. This involves using a Content Management System that is easy to master.
Volunteers can work on one or other or both of these tasks, depending on their skills. Volunteers will need access to a computer that they can use for the project. No specialist software is needed.
Total Theatre are now recruiting volunteers and student placements to work with them from September 2018 onwards, with the start dates and number of days of volunteer work to be agreed between Total Theatre Magazine and the volunteer. They are proposing volunteers will work one day a week for a five to six week period between September and December.
Contact editor Dorothy Max Prior by email to max@totaltheatre.org.uk
Please send a brief CV and a short covering letter, in which you tell them about:
- Skills and experiences you can offer the project
- Skills and experiences you’d like to learn or develop volunteering on this project
- How you feel this volunteer placement would help you in your personal development, studies or career
More about the Total Theatre Archive project:
Total Theatre Magazine has, for over 30 years, celebrated and supported theatre and performance in the UK – in particular, forms given little attention by mainstream media, libraries, or archives, such as: experimental theatre, physical and visual theatre, street theatre and outdoor arts, contemporary circus, puppetry and animation, performance art, hybrid performance, feminist and queer/LGBT theatre. The print magazine encompassed 100 issues over 25 years. Thanks to a grant from the National Lottery Our Heritage fund this archive will be preserved for everyone to engage with, all content provided free to view. The new Total Theatre Archive website will be launched in 2019. The current site can be viewed at www.totaltheatre.org.uk
Editor Dorothy Max Prior and Web Editor John Ellingsworth will be working with members of the magazine’s editorial team and volunteers to scan, upload and tag content, creating a fully searchable website that will be a valuable resource for scholars, journalists, artists, students, and anybody interested in Britain’s alternative theatre and performance history. Once the website is built, Total Theatre Magazine will be working with writers, editors and leading arts professionals to create new content that will reflect upon and interact with the archive.