ABSTRACT
Until recent years the location and accessibility of performing arts research resources were little publicized, or even encouraged, but with the proliferation of performing arts programs in the 1970s, it behooved the theatre library profession to appraise the situation in order to develop, improve, and advance the cause for more efficient and sophisticated methods of bibliographic control. Theatre Arts Monthly, under the editorship of Edith J. R. Isaacs, directed attention to this matter as far back as 1933, when it published a series of articles on the major theatre collections in Europe and America. In 1936, Theatre Arts, Inc., under the auspices of The New York Public Library and the National Theatre Conference (in cooperation with the American Library Association), climbed aboard the bandwagon by publishing the first handbook on the subject, Theatre Collections in Libraries and Museums by Rosamond Gilder and George Freedley. With the exception of Freedley's chapter on "Fugitive Material: its Care and Preservation," this modest 182-page guide is primarily of historical interest today, having gone out-of-print shortly after publication. (A revision and adaptation of the Freedley article by Louis A. Rachow was published in the January 1972 issue of Special Libraries.)
