New York Public Library Digitizes Over a Thousand Hours of Dance Videos from the Jerome Robbins Archive
From the NYPL:
The New York Public Library [recently] announced that over a thousand videos and recordings from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s Archive of the Recorded Moving Image have been digitized and are now managed through NYPL’s Digital Collections at digitalcollections.nypl.org/dancevideo. This web portal serves as a new delivery system for the Library’s digitized dance videos, and dramatically expands and enhances public access to these materials.
Funded by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, NYPL created a video interface for the Digital Collections that addresses the specific needs of the dance research community and features an innovative juxtaposition tool that allows users to compare multiple videos side-by-side.
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The Jerome Robbins Archive of the Recorded Moving Image contains over 24,000 dance films and tapes, and the selection of its holdings now available through the new online portal includes items that span the history of the genre, from the earliest films of the late nineteenth century — such as Thomas Edison’s hand-colored 1897 film Annabella — to the latest HD recordings of modern artists and contemporary productions. Additional videos will be shared online as they become available.
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Not only does the new online portal modernize access to the Dance Division’s recordings, NYPL created tools and a juxtaposition capability for the Digital Collections website that transforms how videos can be watched and used throughout the Library’s collections.
Conceived by the Dance Division’s Director of the Archive of the Recorded Moving Image and the Library for the Performing Arts’ Digital Curator, and executed by NYPL Labs, the new web tool gives users the ability to combine videos from multiple sources – initially NYPL’s Digital Collections and YouTube – into the same workspace, and allows them to edit, annotate, and share their own “mashup” of multimedia content. Using the juxtaposition tool, researchers can easily compare two performances of the same piece, or watch a single production from two camera angles.
[Our emphasis] Like many of their other projects, NYPL Labs, the Library’s digital innovation unit, has released all of the code for this multi-source video player and research space under an open source license so that other software developers, libraries, and institutions can use and help improve this new research tool.
One of the stunning new collections now available freely on the Library’s public website is the Khmer Dance Project (KDP), which contains nine performances and rehearsals of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, and more than 40 related interviews from the region. Funded by a grant from the Anne Hendricks Bass Foundation, the KDP was launched in 2008 when the Center for Khmer Studies partnered with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division to interview and film the three generations of artists – including dancers, musicians and singers, as well as embroiderers and dressers – who kept dance alive during and in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime. The KDP videos have greatly expanded upon existing knowledge and awareness of this endangered and celebrated art form. The KDP will launch in Cambodia on October 25, 2013, for UNESCO World Audiovisual Heritage Day.
Read the Complete Announcement to Learn More About the Collection
Including links to highlights from the collection.
Direct to Search Interface: Digital Collection of Jerome Robbins Archive of the Recorded Moving Image
See Also: Jerome Robbins Dance Division Blog (via NYPL)
Filed under: Digital Collections, Funding, Interactive Tools, Interviews, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Profiles, Public Libraries, Video Recordings

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.