The Virtual Study (ViS), which is operated by the Czech Cultural Institute / Theatre Institute,
is a comprehensive interface for accessing all of the Institute's information databases. The study's objective is to facilitate research, increase the informational value of the database materials through their joint and interconnected publishing, to provide access to materials that would otherwise be inaccessible or accessible only to a limited extent (negatives and slides from the photographic and scenographic archives), and last but not least to protect the original materials, which would suffer from regular use.
Collections contained in the Virtual Study
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This is the catalogue of the Theatre Institute's library, whose mission is to collect, process, store and provide access to all Czech
(and select foreign) theatre literature and periodicals. Online access also includes reader account administration with the option
of extending loans or reserving available documents. Digitized documents are available through
the Kramerius digital library (publications published before 1900 are available online).
Database administrator: Alena Součková, alena.souckova(at)idu.cz
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The catalogue of the Theatre Institute's audio library containing audio recordings of spoken word, operas, operettas, musical melodramas, musicals, stage music, and ballet. Researchers may access the actual recordings at the Institute's offices.
Database administrator: Milan Černý, milan.cerny(at)idu.cz
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The catalogue of the Theatre Institute's video library contains audiovisual recordings of drama, opera, ballet and alternative productions,
as well as documents and portraits of theatre personalities. Recordings are stored on DVD and are being gradually converted into compressed mpeg4 format.
Researchers may access the recordings at the Institute's offices. The video library's collection contains 17,985
records.
Database administrator: Andrea Landovská, andrea.landovska(at)idu.cz.
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The theatre bibliography contains articles about Czech and foreign theatre from newspapers, magazines,
anthologies, and online magazines and websites that are published in the Czech Republic. From selected foreign magazines,
the bibliography also includes all Czech-related articles as well as selected articles about foreign theatre.
The database, which is the successor to the older theatre bibliography card catalogue,
has been systematically assembled since 1995 and contains more than 270,000 bibliographical records.
Theatre journals are retroactively processed to their full extent.
Database administrator: Vladimír Hajšman, vladimir.hajsman(at)idu.cz
Also available is a historical card catalogue bibliography for 1851-1989.
The catalogue was digitized and is operated by a specialized division of the Institute
for Czech Literature at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
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This systematically assembled database contains records on Czech theatre productions going back to 1945.
The database also serves as a catalogue of our documents collection, which includes invitations,
promotional materials, programs, and clippings of newspaper articles and reviews.
The productions database contains 54,616 records.
Database administrator: Lucie Čepcová, lucie.cepcova(at)idu.cz.
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Provides access to our fully digitized scenographic collection of objects and archival documents related primarily
to theatre within the Czech Republic. The database publishes information on the scenographic collection
and on the digitized collection of scenographic documentation. The scenography database contains 57,449 záznamů
(4,893 collection objects, 52,556 documents).
Database administrator: Denisa Šťastná, denisa.stastna(at)idu.cz.
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Provides access to our digitized collection of theatre photographs. The collection was digitized
as part of the project "Preserving and Presenting the Cultural Heritage of Czech and World Theatre",
which was funded in part by a grant from Norway through the Norwegian Financial Mechanism.
The database provides access to scans of positives as well as negatives. The collection, which also includes
digital photographs, contains a total of 511,228 records.
Database administrator: Denisa Šťastná, denisa.stastna(at)idu.cz.
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The Theatre Events database contains basic information on theatre festivals, theatre companies' tours abroad,
visits by foreign theatre companies, exhibitions and permanent expositions on theatre, theatre awards,
and other theatre-related events (lectures, talks, workshops, ...).
The database of events contains 13,976 records.
Database administrator: Radka Petrmichlová, radka.petrmichlova(at)idu.cz.
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The Professional Activities module makes it possible to quickly find all of the activities (as author, producer, and/or actor)
for every individual (including possible name variants), who is included in the Theatre Productions database.
The database of persons contains 69,924 names (included name versions).
Database administrator: Michal Šanda, michal.sanda(at)idu.cz.
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The Casting and Roles module allows you to select a production from the Productions database in which a selected role
appears or in which a particular person plays a role.
Database administrator: Lucie Čepcová, lucie.cepcova(at)idu.cz.
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Virtual Study
The Virtual Study represents the culmination of the Theatre Institute's prior work in the area of digitizing
and establishing databases of its collections. The study is founded on two extensive databases—the Verbis
database by the KP-SYS company (used by the Library and Bibliography Department) and the Divadlo database developed
for the Information and Documents Department (theatre productions, video library, theatre events,
personalities, theatre plays). The related databases (photographs, scenography) provide direct access to digitized items.
The electronic processing of our collections received significant support from several grant projects.
The most significant achievement in this area was the complete inclusion of information
on Czech theatre productions since 1945 and the digitization of nearly 180,000 images from
our documentary collection, performed in 2008-2011 as part of the project "Preserving and
Presenting the Cultural Heritage of Czech and World Theatre", which was made possible by
a grant from Norway through the Norwegian Financial Mechanism.
The Virtual Study provides comprehensive access to information and digitized objects contained
in our databases. This includes a library catalogue with a research module and user account administration tool,
an extensive bibliographical database of articles linked to the full texts of articles
(accessible only via the Institute's internal network), a video library, a database of Czech theatre productions
since 1945, a database of theatre photographs containing 511,228 digitized images,
and a database of scenographic items and documentation containing
copies of 57,449 stage and costume designs.
In digitizing our collections and making them publicly accessible, we have made sure to observe
the provisions of Act no. 121/2000 on copyright protection. For this reason, some digitized
materials cannot be made available via the internet, but are available to registered researchers
for study purposes at the offices of the Theatre Institute. This concerns primarily the digitized
collection of items published after 1900, several designs from the scenographic collection,
and photographs for which we could not secure permission from the copyright holders. These items are
labeled accordingly on the internet. Anyone interested in studying these materials will
be helped in the study rooms at our offices.
Project coordinator: Ondřej Svoboda, ondrej.svoboda(at)idu.cz, 224 809 164
Other electronic resources of the Theatre Institute
Contributing to the preparation and operation of the Virtual Study were:
- Rebex s.r.o.
- Jiří Kocourek
- Jan Paukert
- We use the Verbis and Portaro software from KP-SYS
Partners:
We would like to thank the following for their support:
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