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LARAINE CORRELL
THE BELKNAP COLLECTION for the Performing Arts is the new name for the Dance, Music and Theatre Archives located in the University of Florida Libraries at Gainesville, Florida. As a performing arts library, the Belknap Collection accepts depositories of the ephemera of the performing and recorded arts, preserving the materials for scholars and enthusiasts, present and future. The ephemera includes all non-book materials pertaining to theatre, dance, music and the cinema which are frequently lost or thrown away, such as playbills and programmes, heralds, posters, scrapbooks, designs, photographs, prints, clippings, news letters, events calendars, press releases, in-house publications and even advertising circulars. In short, any material is sought which documents the arts activities of professional and amateur performing companies, arts organizations and schools. Concentration is mainly on theUnited States and Canada, but some materials are regularly received from Europe and Latin America. While a few items date back to the fifteenth century, most of the holdings are from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
The Belknap Collection is very deliberate about collecting current ephemera. Five hundred organizations regularly supply the collection with up-to-date materials and information about themselves. The majority of all new acquisitions are received through the mail in this manner, averaging about twenty items each day. Each organization, company or school is asked to send whatever they feel they can afford in terms of
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time, postage and cost of materials. Without exception response to these requests is most generous and, incidentally, most unpredictable as to exactly what will be sent. Many companies must limit their donations to performance programmes for each show, either sending the material on an item-by-item basis or waiting until the end of the season to send everything at once. Occasionally only calendars of events or season subscription brochures are sent. Even less frequently the Collection receives color slides of shows or beautiful souvenir publications. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation faithfully sends their daily programing notes.
In addition to solicitations, the Belknap Collection is fortunate to have exchange programs for duplicate materials with other performing arts libraries, notably the Crawford Collection from Yale University, The New York Public Library Theatre Research Collection, and the Wisconsin Center for Theatre Research. Except for regional material which is saved to...