Elspeth Millar, Project Archivist, writes:
Welcome to the blog for the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive and the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive ‘Beacon’ Project, which will be active throughout 2015.
The British Stand-Up Comedy Archive at the University of Kent was established in 2013 to celebrate, preserve, and provide access to the archives and records of British stand-up comedy and stand-up comedians. You can find more information on the archive itself and the Beacon project on the ‘about’ page of this blog, and through our blog postings as the project develops.
The 2015 Beacon Project aspect of the BSUCA will organise the public launch of the archive; catalogue, preserve, digitise, and make accessible the existing collections; publicise the collections and their use; and identify new collections for deposit in the archive. We also have a number of public events planned, including the inaugural Linda Smith lecture, a series of ‘in conversation’ events with Olly Double, and a conference in January 2016. Further information can be found on the events page of this blog.
In addition to the purposes and aims listed above, within this project we also aim to ask and answer questions and challenges that may arise from an archive of Stand-Up Comedy, such as…
- What archives do comedians collect and keep? What should we encourage them to keep?
- Who will use the collections, and how should we encourage and facilitate their use? How will issues of copyright, ownership, and data protection affect this use?
- How should we store and provide access to the material that we are preserving?
- What archives/records are within scope?
We hope that the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive and this blog of the project will appeal to stand-up comedians, historians of performance, people who like stand-up comedy, journalists and broadcasters, as well as those interested in the archival and digital preservation issues that we will come across through the project.
Please do send us your thoughts by email (standup@kent.ac.uk) or tweet us (@unikentstandup).