S1E2: The London Stage

This episode’s guest is Mattie Burkert, whose London Stage Database was featured in the Aug. 14, 2019 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Mattie sets the scene for 17th- and 18th-century theater performances, describes those performances’ eventful journey into bits and bytes, how the digital records were almost lost to history, and how she and collaborators recovered them.

Relevant and mentioned links:

• The London Stage Database
• “Recovering the London Stage Information Bank: Lessons from an Early Humanities Computing Project,” in which Mattie describes the data’s history in more detail
• “From Manual to Digital: Women's Hands and the Work of Eighteenth-Century Studies,” Mattie’s article about the outsourcing of the Information Bank’s digital transcription effort
• The London Stage Information Bank’s data and other files, as uploaded by Mattie and Brianna Marshall, including scanned images of the code (as found in Will Daland’s attic)
• Scans of “The London Stage, 1660-1800” reference books hosted by Hathi Trust
• Scan of “Index to the The London Stage, 1660-1800”, also hosted by Hathi Trust
• The 1971 article in “Computers and the Humanities” about the London Stage Information Bank
• Lawrence University’s Institute for Paper Chemistry, home to the mainframe used by London Stage Information Bank
• Data visualizations using the London Stage Database, in response to Nightingale x Data Is Plural data data visualization challenge

Mattie sends a special thanks to the University of Oregon’s Cameron Seright, who fixed some late-breaking website bugs just in time for this podcast release.

Theme music by Nikhil Sonnad.