Expect the Unexpected: Expanding the Tools for Mining Digital Resources
Sometimes the most interesting documents concerning a show are not the interviews in the newspaper or the memos found in archives. After all, many theatrical figures, especially performers, never collected their papers and donated them to libraries. Finding these hidden gems, though, requires searching outside the traditional locations for items that may redefine what scholars think of as informative sources. For example, a matchbook found in an antique store might answer a question about marketing in a way no other item can.
This paper examines the wide array of musical theater-related digital resources that fall outside the boundary of organized scholarly sites such as RILM and ProQuest. Methods of combing eBay, Amazon, and other non-traditional depositories will be discussed, with specific strategies for looking at items that have been removed from the sites, as well as methods for getting information and copies of items without purchasing them. I will then give examples of how objects such as novelty toys, semi-pornographic magazines, and unsold autographs can be placed in dialogue with scores, libretti, and other archival materials to create the most vivid (and comprehensive) historical record available to modern scholars. Furthermore, I will give examples of my own work on Broadway during the 1910s, showing how specific sources have provided answers to questions that no other primary sources could provide.