Mak­ing Con­nec­tions Vis­i­ble: Build­ing a Knowl­edge Base for Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Zones of Contact and Fields of Consistency in Electronic Literature

• Mak­ing Con­nec­tions Vis­i­ble: Build­ing a Knowl­edge Base for Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture

• Scott Rettberg

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Zones of Contact and Fields of Consistency in Electronic Literature

  De­vel­op­ing a Net­work-Based Cre­ative Com­mu­nity: Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture as a Model of Cre­ativ­ity and In­no­va­tion in Prac­tice (ELM­CIP) is a col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search pro­ject funded by the Hu­man­i­ties in the Eu­ro­pean Re­search Area (HERA) JRP for Cre­ativ­ity and In­no­va­tion. Fo­cus­ing on the elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture com­mu­nity in Eu­rope as a model of net­worked cre­ativ­ity and in­no­va­tion in prac­tice, ELM­CIP is in­tended both to study the for­ma­tion and in­ter­ac­tions of that com­mu­nity and also to fur­ther elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture re­search and prac­tice in Eu­rope. The ELM­CIP Knowl­edge Base is a pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble on­line data­base that fo­cuses on cap­tur­ing core bib­li­o­graphic data and archival ma­te­ri­als about au­thors, cre­ative works, crit­i­cal writ­ing, events, or­ga­ni­za­tions, pub­lish­ers, and teach­ing re­sources and on mak­ing vis­i­ble the con­nec­tions be­tween cre­ative and schol­arly ac­tiv­i­ties in the field.
  This pre­sen­ta­tion will focus on three as­pects of the ELM­CIP Knowl­edge Base in par­tic­u­lar:

  1. Cross-ref­er­enc­ing to make vis­i­ble the emer­gence of cre­ative and schol­arly com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice. In de­vel­op­ing the ELM­CIP Knowl­edge Base plat­form, we put a par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on show­ing the con­nec­tions be­tween dif­fer­ent forms of prac­tice in schol­arly and artis­tic com­mu­ni­ties, and mak­ing cross-ref­er­ences ap­par­ent and ac­ces­si­ble. So for in­stance, records doc­u­ment­ing cre­ative works are au­to­mat­i­cally linked to crit­i­cal writ­ing that ref­er­ence them, and vice versa, records of events and ex­hi­bi­tion link to works that were pre­sented, au­thor records link to ma­te­ri­als writ­ten, edited and taught. This ca­pac­ity to show the web of con­nec­tions on which a cre­ative com­mu­nity is based is a dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of the pro­ject.
  2. Open ac­cess and in­ter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tion. The ELM­CIP pro­ject is work­ing with other in­ter­na­tional pro­jects in the US, Canada, Spain, Por­tu­gal, Aus­tralia and else­where to es­tab­lish open-ac­cess con­tent shar­ing be­tween the most ac­tive data­base pro­jects and or­ga­ni­za­tions in the field, to fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tional co­op­er­a­tion and growth of the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties in which it is en­gaged.
  3. Doc­u­ment­ing and the path to Archiv­ing elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture The ELM­CIP pro­ject in­cludes both meta­data-level doc­u­men­ta­tion and some archival ma­te­ri­als, such as .PDF files, source code of some works, audio and video doc­u­men­ta­tion of pre­sen­ta­tions and so forth. This pre­sen­ta­tion will con­sider ways in which this might lead to the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of an elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture repos­i­tory, in which works of elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture are not only doc­u­mented, but also in some fash­ion pre­served for archival ref­er­ence and fu­ture ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

Category:

• Panel