News

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

Legacy Search Retirement

As was previewed in an announcement earlier this spring, the LSDB team is retiring the Legacy Search feature from website. Read on to learn more about what this feature did, why it’s being retired, and what to do if you realize you need to use it in the future. What was the Legacy Search? Legacy Search was a feature that allowed users to reproduce searches conducted between the initial site launch in July 2019 and a major upgrade in May 2021. While the underlying database records were unchanged, this upgrade changed the way users’ queries were relayed to the database, which in turn affected the results for many searches. Introductory text on the now-retired Legacy Search interface. See a snapshot of the page taken using the Wayback Machine. Background LSDB was launched in July 2019 with a PHP/MySQL-based search function. When a user ran a search, the terms of that search were translated into a... Read More

Database Revisions

In addition to website restructuring, there have been a number of minor database changes behind the scenes. In order to lay the foundation for future development work, the LSDB team has added constraints to codify the relationship between database tables. In the process of adding these constraints, we identified transcription problems where events were listed without the correct theater code. We revealed thirteen events with incorrect metadata about the theaters they were performed at, which should now be correctly identified in database searches. From a user perspective, these will result in small changes to performance entries, such as the example seen below. The top image depicts a performance entry before the database changes, in which no theatre is listed for the event. The bottom image depicts the same event, which now includes information on the theatre. Click here to  view the entry on the website. Six more events are now listed as... Read More

Defunded but Undeterred

It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that NEH grant funding for “Extending the London Stage Database” was terminated abruptly earlier this month, as part of a wave of cancellations that has affected nearly all individuals and organizations whose work is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Association for Computers and Humanities has gathered data showing that, since the beginning of this month, NEH has terminated at least 1,434 grants worth $427 million — a number that sounds large, but represents a mere 0.000063% of the federal budget. Multiple news organizations have reported that these terminations are being carried out by operatives of the Department of Government Efficiency, who have placed on leave or fired a majority of NEH staff.  We received a version of the same form letter that many other grantees have shared with reporters and on social media. It read, in part: Your... Read More

Website Reorganization

In order to create a more user friendly interface, the London Stage Database team is restructuring the content and pages on the website. Information from the old “About” and “User Guide” pages has been reorganized into shorter, more easily digested subpages, and dropdown menus make it easier for users to navigate to the information they need. Special thanks go out to Michele Pflug, Emma Kaisner, Erin Winter, Franny Gaede, and John Zhao, as well as our Advisory Board for their input as the team worked on these changes. Read on to learn about the major changes to look out for on the website! Highlights of the content reorganization: The User Guide now contains an About the Data page for users to learn about working with LSDB data and its limitations. The section of the User Guide formerly known as “Key Terms” is now a separate Glossary page, with important historical and theatrical terms... Read More