What to do about Canadian Theatre Websites and Internet Resources

[Lee Ramsay]

Listserv Colleagues:

Thanks to all who responded to what had happened to Fred
Kern's excellent metasite on Canadian theatre. This is a real
loss, although I certainly wish Mr. Kern all the best with his new
endeavours.

I guess the question now is what should be done to fill the gap.
If anyone has any ideas I would be interested in hearing more.
Also, if anyone has the list of what used to be on that site or
knows how I can get a copy, I would appreciate the information.
Although I can't make a commitment on behalf of the library (at
least not yet), I think we would be prepared to be involved in
developing an alternative.

Currently the library bookmarks sites and organizes them by
category, rather like Yahoo.  There's a page for theatre and it
includes both Canadian and non-Canadian sites.  The
bookmarks are only available on the terminals in the library.
However, we are launching something called the Virtual
Reference Library shortly, which will make this subject tree
available on the net, and provide a high-level search engine with
it.

If anyone knows of any valuable Canadian theatre sites, please
send them to me and I'll add them to our bookmarks.  I'll also
keep you all posted on the launch date for the VRL so you can
access what we've pulled together.  This should help in the short
term, and perhaps we can come up with an idea for the long
term.

Lee Ramsay
Performing Arts Centre
Toronto Reference Library
lramsay at gwmail.mtrl.toronto.on.ca