Deciding how to structure archives can be quite a challenge. Unlike library and museum cataloguing which deals with individual items, archive cataloguing look at multiple items in relation to each other. It has different levels and they are arranged from general to specific. The lower levels relate to upper levels like a family tree. The top level is the fonds level and includes information that relates to the whole collection. This is where I’ll record some biographical information about Peter Brook but also about the arrangement and provenance of the collection. The next level down is the series level and this is where similar types of items are grouped together. For example, production photographs is a series in the Peter Brook Collection. The following level or children of the series is file level and is where I’ll describe records within each series. For example, a folder of photographs of the Balcony is the file level. The lowest level in an archive is item level. In this case, an individual photo is the item level.
After a thorough look through the material, I decided that the collection series should be organised mainly by type of material as this was how most of the material had been originally organised and hopefully this will be useful for researchers. The Peter Brook Collections is going to be catalogued to file level – although it would be really interesting to describe each item in the collection, it would probably take decades!
I selected his artworks as my first series to tackle. I really enjoyed looking at his sketchpads and doodles as they’re quite fun. They also show how Brook starts to visualise his productions.
Last month, I catalogued the production photographs and my favourites include these photographs by Angus McBean of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier in Titus Andronicus in 1958.
We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their generous support of this project.
