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Theatre Library Association

Theatre Library Association (TLA) is a national organization supporting libraries, museums, and archives with collections across the performing arts: theatre, dance, film, television, and other popular entertainments. TLA boasts a diverse membership of librarians, archivists, curators, scholars, educators, students, private collectors, and performing arts practitioners. Its membership is located primarily in the United States, with some members in Canada, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

History
TLA was founded as an affiliate organization of the American Library Association during the 1937 ALA annual conference in New York. George Freedley, the first curator of the New York Public Library's Theatre Collection, organized a "Theatre Library Round Table", presided over by Harry M. Lydenberg, Director of the NYPL, and attended by representatives from theatre collections at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the Museum of the City of New York, and other institutions, as well as theatre writers and historians, and librarians from across the country. George Freedley would go on to become TLA's first President, and to lead the organization through its first quarter century.

Publications
Since its founding, TLA has continued to be an active force for the furtherance of performing arts librarianship through its publications, awards, and conferences.

A newsletter, BROADSIDE, has been published since 1940. The newsletter serves to report the news and activities of the association in addition to book reviews and exhibition reviews related to the performing arts. In 2006, BROADSIDE became an online publication. In 2014, BROADSIDE News Digest succeeded BROADSIDE. The digest format is compiled from the news and posts to its website.

TLA has published a monograph series, Performing Arts Resources (PAR), since 1974. The PAR "Documenting:" series published over a period of time from 2007 - 2013 focused on the various areas of theatrical design: with volumes on lighting design, costume design, and scenic design have been published.

Awards
TLA honors several awards for outstanding published works related to live performance and recorded performance. TLA recognizes outstanding service to the profession of performing arts librarianship with the Louis Rachow Distinguished Service Award. In 2011, TLA established the Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Scholarship Award.

The TLA Book Awards, consisting of the George Freedley Memorial Award, for books related to live performance, and the Richard Wall Memorial Award (renamed in 2010 to honor the longtime chair of the Book Awards Committee), for books related to recorded or broadcast performance, have been a favorite activity of the association since 1969. The George Freedley Memorial Award has been awarded continuously since 1969 with exception to 2013 for works published in 2012.

In 2013, TLA renamed its Distinguished Service Award in honor of Louis Rachow, longtime librarian of the Hampden-Booth Theatre Library and the International Theatre Institute Library, whose half century of service exemplifies the award's recognition of members whose efforts have contributed to the association and the profession. TLA also began offering a scholarship award in 2011 to encourage library school students interested in the performing arts. Louis Rachow continues to serve as the TLA historian.

Partnerships
TLA has maintained a close relationship with the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) since its founding in 1956. TLA actively participates at the ASTR Annual Conference. In 2014, TLA hosted the biennial conference of its international counterpart, the International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts (SIBMAS). The conference featured programs and discussion on dance preservation, digital humanities and the performing arts, and material culture and ephemera. The conference was held in New York at the John Jay College, City University of New York, in June 2014.

TLA has also partnered with performing arts organizations to present a series of special symposia on how performing arts practitioners use library and archival collections. The proceedings of the most recent symposium, Holding Up the Mirror: Authenticity and Adaptation in Shakespeare Today, presented with The Public Theater, Theatre for a New Audience, American Shakespeare Center, and American Repertory Theater.