Digital theatre masterpieces - MBC

We are pleased to announce that thanks to the possibilities offered by the Małopolska Digital Library, further collections of our heritage are being digitised.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow, together with its Partners, has been carrying out a project to digitise the most valuable theatrical copies from the library collections of the Artistic Archive and the Theatre Library.

As part of the "CATS" project, in 2021, 50 theatrical copies were digitised, developed and made available – manuscripts, typescripts and prints: director's, stage manager's, prompter's, censor's and author's copies, from the years 1837-1939, from the valuable resources of the Artistic Archive and the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre. The selected resource will be made available in the form of a virtual digital library on the Małopolska Digital Library (MDL) platform involved in the collection and sharing of Małopolska literature in digitised form, operating within the Digital Libraries Federation (its collections are also made available through such portals as: European Digital Library EUROPEANA). In addition, digitised copies will be made available on the www.teatrwkrakowie.pl theatre website through a link to the Partner platform.

The digitised collection will be made available free of charge, and the 5 most attractive items along with their detailed description will be published on the www.teatrwkrakowie.pl theatre website. Thanks to audio description fragments of these copies will also be accessible for people with vision impairment. The digital projections created as part of the task will feed the extensive educational publication that the Theatre plans to develop and publish after the end of the third stage of CATS (in 2024).

Library collections of the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow (opened in 1893, until 1909 under the name of the Municipal Theatre) are the largest and most valuable collection of theatrical items in Poland stored in a working theatre. The main and most valuable part of the resource is a unique, coherent and continuous historical collection of theatrical copies of plays performed or intended for performance in the former Krakow theatre in the years 1836-1983 and in the Municipal Theatre (from 1909 the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre) from 1893 until the present day. The collection documents the history of Polish and Krakow theatre, its repertoire, aesthetic, ideological and institutional changes.