Thursday, December 01, 2011
Playbill Launches PlaybillVault.com, Comprehensive Broadway Database, Dec. 1
Playbill.com: Playbill, the most recognized brand in the theatre for over 127 years, unveils Playbillvault.com, the most comprehensive searchable database of Broadway history on the web, Dec. 1. The new website features decades of digitized versions of Playbills, photos, videos and more.
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6 comments:
What a wonderful feat! This really speaks to how our world is becoming more and more virtually based each passing day. Now something that was once thought of as being exclusively on paper will be available at the click of a mouse. I know many Broadway fans who can perhaps not afford to be collectors either in terms of money or patience who will be glad to be able to look through these collections online. However, I do know people who are collectors. They may feel that the sanctity of the Playbill has been violated or that their efforts were a waste now that all the photos and information are available online. In general, most will enjoy this feature, but some purists may be angered or befuddled by the transition.
I am really excited that Playbill is doing this. Sometimes it is really hard to find the information you need about old shows without going to some place like New York. This will allow access to many different people and give a great sense of the history of theatre in the Unites States. After poking around the site a bit I am even more interested in exploring all the resources it offers.
This is neat and from my brief viewing of the site it seems like a good resource for more well-known plays and musicals. When I searched for more obscure shows they had information but not playbills. On that front I found IBDB to be more complete. This summer I worked with a designer and we needed some old playbills of obscure shows and I still couldn't find them in this database. This is a great tool but for it to be more powerful it needs to be expanded to cover more plays and have more playbills. At this point it would be a very valuable tool
One question I ask is, will there ever be a day when there will not be a printed playbill. In a world where things are trying to be as "green" as possible, does it really make sense to print our 20 pages of full color ink for each patron.
In this regard, this database is awesome! Perhaps someday patrons could be given e-readers with access to this database and a code to access it from home. Or is the paper one here to stay?
I am so excited as soon as I finished the article I went to check it out. It is really cool. I find it really incredible that now all of this information is available to the public whenever they want it and wherever they are. I am sure that it will now be much easier and much more convenient to find out information on older plays. I am defiantly going to spend some more time looking around the site.
Just like it was wonderful to see the database of spaces a few weeks ago in Chicago, a database of all these old programs, and a historical reference for all these old shows is a great thing to see. This will be great for finding information regarding Production Histories of certain shows, or just finding out about productions. It's great that Playbill is providing a reference to people to look at to find out more about older shows. It'll be great to look through the backlog and see all shows and what's been put on in the past, and hopefully that'll inform our work moving forward
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