Dance Heritage Coalition

The Dance Heritage Coalition is a national initiative concerned with the preservation and documentation of dance materials. As part of its access project, the Coalition Planning Group proposes to use the NACO authorities program as the vehicle for the addition of its new and retrospective authority records to the LC/NACO authority file. Members of the Coalition expect to load cataloging records for primary research materials in the area of dance into a national bibliographic utility. The initial contribution is estimated to include more than 130,000 name authority records and 4,000 proposed subject heading authorities.

The undertaking has just completed the first year under a three- year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The chief activities of the coalition during its first year of operation focussed on planning and developing a cooperative cataloging project. A major grant proposal to fund the funnel project was submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in June. That proposal will make possible the cataloging of previously unprocessed dance materials from three divisions in the Library of Congress (Music; Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound; and Folklife) and six other institutions nationwide (Harvard, New York Public Library (NYPL), Duke University, Ohio State University, San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, and the University of Minnesota).

In addition to adding authority records resulting from the cataloging of new materials, the project will contribute the existing authority file of the New York Public Library's Dance Collection to the LC/NACO Authority File. Much work has already taken place on the project in anticipation of the NEH funding: the Library's NACO project staff have been working regularly with the Coalition's project director to coordinate project activities at LC; the NYPL's chief dance cataloger has received NACO training; test runs of NYPL records have been made by the Research Libraries Group (RLG); subject heading and name heading work has begun with staff of the Library's Cataloging Policy and Support Office, and a project cataloging council is being formed.

For more information contact:

Dance Heritage Coalition

Ms. Pat Rader

New York Public Library

521 W. 43 St.

New York, NY 10036

phone: 212.870.1752

fax: 212.870.1869

email: prader@nypl.org