Ensemble@Yale represents a collaboration between the Yale Digital Humanities Lab and Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library to create a searchable archive of Yale’s theatrical playbills, beginning with 90 years of programs from the Department of Drama. To create this archive, we turned to crowdsourced, human-added transcriptions that identified people and their specific roles in each production.

As a collaborator on the project, I developed user workflows to encourage and facilitate participation on Zooniverse, a crowdsourcing platform that connected us with volunteers who helped transcribe over 1,000 programs. Additionally, I co-wrote content for the project website, user guide on Zooniverse, and promotion materials. Currently, I am using the transcribed data to create network visualizations that show how actors and staff were connected to one another over time by plays.

Additional team members include: Douglas Duhaime (DHLab), Lindsay King (Arts Library), Peter Leonard (DHLab), Alex O'Keefe (formerly Arts Library now School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and Monica Ong Reed (DHLab).