Preserving and Presenting the Past, Present, and Future of Dance History: Digitizing the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Archives

FAIN: PW-264179-19

University of Maryland, College Park (College Park, MD 20742-5141)
Robin C. Pike (Project Director: July 2018 to November 2022)

The enhanced description and digitization of 1,329 video recordings and 1,000 pages of programs related to the work and performances of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.

The UMD Libraries requests $313,753.44 from the National Endowment for Humanities Humanities Collection and Reference Resources Foundations Grant program to describe and digitize the 1,329 unique video media assets and 211 programs (approximately 1,000 pages) from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange collection held by Special Collections in Performing Arts. Liz Lerman, a choreographer, performer, writer, educator, and speaker, founded the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976. Over a 40-year career, Lerman built a body of work and knowledge based on simple but radical ideas. Aspects of her work have won critical and scholarly attention and serves as important reference material for artists and collaborators within genomics, physics, law and medicine. Digitization is necessary for the preservation of this important documentation as they are deteriorating at a 15% rate. Lerman is developing a toolbox in partnership with Special Collections in which this digitized video are critical to the project.

Associated Products

Scaling Up Video Digitization at the University of Maryland Libraries: A Case Study (Article)
Title: Scaling Up Video Digitization at the University of Maryland Libraries: A Case Study
Author: Caringola, Elizabeth M.
Author: McClanahan, Pamela A.
Author: Pike, Robin C.
Abstract: In 2015, a team at the University of Maryland Libraries collaborated on a pilot project to digitize 100 VHS tapes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange collection and, in doing so, established organizational workflows for video digitization and access. After completing the pilot phase of the project, staff who worked on the project published a case study in this journal that articulated a question echoed throughout that process: “Is this enough?” Enough descriptive metadata? Enough technical metadata? Enough storage space? This article will reflect on the pilot project, detail how the digitization specifications and workflows established during the pilot project have changed over the intervening years, and how they were scaled-up to digitize and make accessible the remaining videos 1,125 videos in the collection under the auspices of a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol38/iss1/1/
Primary URL Description: article-level URL
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists
Publisher: Society of Georgia Archivists

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