News

How we spent our summer vacation

Our Eugene-based team has been busy behind the scenes this summer! For months, we have been working on a series of interrelated improvements to the database and search algorithms underpinning our website, and preparing to roll out a new feature that supports research discovery by connecting performance events to printed texts of the plays staged. As these updates go live in the coming weeks, you may notice some changes to your search results and the data you export from the site. Once all of the new data and code is deployed, we’ll package a new version of the project, publish it to GitHub, and archive it in Zenodo. As major updates roll out, we’ll post to this blog with a bit more information about what’s changing and why; technical types will find more detailed process documentation in our GitHub repository. For now, here’s a general overview of what to expect: Patch 1. Search index... Read More

New: Recapcha protection for data downloads

Starting today, users of the London Stage Database might notice that downloading your search results requires you to first click a button that says “I’m human.” We’re using Google’s Recapcha service to implement this feature, which is necessary to protect the website infrastructure from the bot attacks that have overloading our server and taking the site down several times a day. Also known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, these bot swarms are the cause of the frequent outages you might have noticed if you’ve tried to use our site over the past couple of weeks. HUGE thanks to Analyst Programmer John Zhao, Research Data Management Librarian Erin Winter, and Special Projects Librarian Franny Gaede for an amazing all-hands response this week once we realized what was happening. Hopefully, with this fix in place, you can wrap up your summer research using LSDB without any further interruptions!

Possible site outages tomorrow, August 6

Due to planned server maintenance, the London Stage Database website may experience periodic outages tomorrow, August 6, during business hours (U.S. Pacific Daylight Time). Everything should be back to normal by Thursday, August 7. Thanks for your patience!

Behind the Scenes: The Fascinating History of Rehearsal Plays

LSDB Research Assistant extraordinaire Emma Kaisner recently put the finishing touches on an incredible interactive timeline of notable backstage dramas of the long eighteenth century. Not only does she delve into the commentaries these plays offered on the entertainment industry, gender roles, and authorship, but she also uncovers the fascinating histories of their performances using the London Stage Database and other digital humanities resources. Emma’s timeline is deeply researched, lively, and engaging — I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you have any issues loading the embedded content below, you can also open the timeline in a new tab. 

A field trip to Special Collections

Our last blog post shared a feature story about the London Stage Database from CAS Connections, a publication of the UO College of Arts and Science. ICYMI: The Show Must Go On: Groundbreaking digital humanities project brings theater history to the public One of the images in that story was taken by Nate Kersey, class of 2025 (congratulations, Nate!). He joined me, Michele, and Erin at UO’s Knight Library for a visit to Special Collections and Archives, where we had the chance to check out eighteenth-century editions of plays by Eliza Haywood, Colley Cibber, Thomas Southerne, John Dryden, Hannah Cowley, and Susannah Centlivre, among others. Some of the photos from that day will be making their way on to the main website as we add more content, but for now, here’s a sneak preview of some of our favorites: From left: Erin Winter, Michele Pflug, and Mattie Burkert examine an eighteenth-century book in University... Read More

LSDB in the News: “The Show Must Go On”

Here at UO, CAS Connections is an online-first magazine that showcases innovative research, teaching, and public scholarship from the College of Arts and Sciences. The LSDB team has known for months that the writers at Connections were putting together a piece about our project and the new work enabled by the NEH grant. When Michele, Emma, and I first sat down for an interview with writer Jenny Rice, though, we were expecting to provide a bit of background and human interest for an otherwise ordinary press release. None of us could have predicted how the grant termination in April would change the narrative. I’m grateful to Jenny and her whole team for putting together such an in-depth story and multimedia package about the project’s impacts so far, and our hopes for the future. Click through the preview below to read on — and be sure to check out the bonus feature... Read More