Inclusive cataloguing blog: “an ancient tale new told”

In this Inclusive Cataloguing blog, Philip Milnes-Smith reflects on a recent project at Shakespeare’s Globe which has created four thematic finding aids to the collections.

The profession has a long history of acting as eternal public relations for the powerful (reflecting too often only their terms and attitudes) failing to preserve or even name those with less power.  That creates a current challenge for those who seek to surface more inclusive and diverse stories – stories that could help build connections with new audiences.  At the Globe, with funding from one of The National Archives’ Research and Innovation grants, we have been able to transform our understanding of our own collections and improve discoverability for those whose contributions were hard to find in the catalogue. 

The problem of the catalogue

The weakness of our catalogue was revealed by an attempt in 2022 to pull together a temporary display of material on a theme.  In that case the topic was Queer Characters in New Writing.  It was immediately obvious, however, that the catalogue alone could not support this – because, for example, there were no subject tags. 

To identify characters with queer identities we needed to look at reviews – that we were not keeping.  Back then, we had no internal records to support our own research, or to assist an external researcher on this topic.

There were other issues too.  Sometimes the most unambiguously queer lines in the published script had, for whatever reason, been cut in performance.  In other cases, characters were more like combinations of (negative) stereotypes.  Understanding where there had been queer representation was an important step forward, but it was not enough.  Audience development work with this demographic would need us to know which content might need a bit of a health warning.   

The opportunities of a finding aid

The solution that emerged over the course of time was to create four thematic finding aids (one each for disability, gender, queerness and race).  These research guides can offer readers possibility, and divergent readings (including from community perspectives) – so that they can make up their own minds. Catalogues, which want to state proven fact, are not so well-placed to help readers try out different lenses when thinking about the past.

Audiences

It is imagined that these innovative resources will reach several different audiences.  First, with a new, more publicly visible reading room being developed this year, one imagined general audience is visitors to the site, who might ask different things of our collections than those studying the plays for more academic reasons.  The four themes create an opportunity for the Research and Collection team to tell different stories about our performance heritage in our public engagement.  Therefore, the research guides will function as a point of reference in planning new outreach or exhibition work, that could engage with these new audiences.  However, the new guides also offer more accessible routes into the collection than a catalogue, which is often not very intuitive for new users. 

Moreover, the resources are designed to support the Globe’s teaching of Shakespeare (including on the MA course run jointly with King’s College London and facilitate dissertation research).  But they could also be a valuable resource for Globe staff training others to teach Shakespeare, or leading, for example, Pride Tours of the site.

Externally, we hope to reach a worldwide audience (of people who may never get the opportunity to come to our reading room) through the resources not only sitting on the front page of the archive catalogue but being freely available on the Globe’s website.  That offers us reach to learners in parts of the world where there is a cultural backlash to talking about topics like gender and race in an educational setting.

The work

The first step was to demonstrate proof of concept by roughing out a draft of a couple of guides that would show to stakeholders how they could be useful. I had a clear idea at the beginning about the structure, which would include introductions, a new short essay from a Shakespeare academic, as well as a bibliography of relevant scholarship.

It was an opportunity to share different ways of thinking about production and performance. For example, the Globe is known for some all-male productions in the ‘original practice’ years, but over time there have now been more all-female productions, and there have also been mixed productions where women played men and vice versa, and where the gender of a role has been flipped (which also has the potential to queer the character, as in the 2025 production of Cymbeline). 

However, notwithstanding any difficulties that exist with applying these contemporary lenses to the past, it was vital to look at the themes in the texts of the plays themselves, not just our production history.  For example, it was important to allow readers to, for example, see the evidence that Richard III is not even the only disabled character in the play that bears his name, let alone the only disabled protagonist in the canon. 

As project co-ordinator and chief editor, much of the work fell to me.  However, the grant also allowed us to recruit an early career scholar to undertake research and bibliographic work.  I was also able to pay honoraria to an intersectional Inclusion Advisory Panel of volunteers with lived experience across all four areas, who were invaluable in ensuring the work came from a broader community than just the Research and Collections team. 

Importantly, this is not a ‘one and done’ exercise.  Without the need for additional funding, the guides can be annually updated.  This allows us to add in material related to productions in the most recent seasons, things surfaced through new research, and new publications.

The outcome: greater discoverability of diversity in our heritage

Each guide is standalone, but also cross-referenced to the other guides, helping users try out different lenses when grappling with characters in the plays.  A direct response to Inclusion Advisory Panel feedback was a timeline of the other Early Modern plays included in the guides (many of which have had a limited performance history and are therefore not well-known).  Again, this is cross-referenced to the guides.

The new finding aids are not a duplication of the catalogue, but some of what we have learned will feed back into description - but that is not a time-limited project, that’s every archivist’s job forever.