Michigan Opera Theatre's Allesee Dance and Opera Resource Library goes live online for the very first time this month, opening nearly 40 years of Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT) history to the general public. This custom, state-of-the-art online database was created through a partnership with the School of Library and Information Science. It includes a complete performance history and a catalog of thousands of unique items, including scores, books, CDs, videos, reviews, and many unique items from MOT productions. Click here to visit MOT's online database archive: http://motlibrary.slis.wayne.edu/.

In 2006, Michigan Opera Theatre began a partnership with SLIS as part of an Institute of Library and Museum Services Grant titled, "Educating the 21st Century Fine and Performing Arts Librarian." The grant allowed students in the MLIS program to gain experience while developing the library and online archive for MOT, both helping to preserve a piece of Michigan's cultural history and provide experience to the next generation of information professionals.

The partnership between SLIS and MOT provided many of the resources for the library that would not otherwise be available to MOT, including hosting the site on their servers. The MOT library strives to be a model for how small libraries can undertake large digitization and database projects by partnering with larger institutions.