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Submission Type
Panel
Start Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 9:15 AM
End Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 10:15 AM
Location
Hypertexts & Fictions
Abstract
This panel introduces the renewed Consortium on Electronic Literature: CELL, The Index.
Since its inception in 2009, CELL has been a vital resource for cross-database collaboration. The vigorous database-building practices in the field of electronic literature have been key in establishing the field, while demonstrating the diversity of electronic literature across cultures. The CELL Search Engine has been a community-driven project to provide access to all these databases in one platform. Databases have often mentioned their prospective inclusion in CELL from their inception.
After some years of inactivity of the CELL project, the Center for Digital Narrative (University of Bergen, Norway) is revitalizing this common goal as CELL, The Index. CELL, The Index has a new interface, infrastructure, and data model that will ensure longevity and lessen the burden on individual scholars. With the rise of linked open data, we have chosen to use the collaborative, open-data knowledge graph Wikidata. Advantages of Wikidata are numerous. As a document-oriented database, Wikidata is ideally suited to the weird and wonderful ways that electronic literature breaks the boundaries of what literature and art can be. Based on our carefully developed data model, the documentation on the Wikidata platform can be expansive. At the same time, we will create our own focused environment with the taxonomy that is relevant to the electronic literature community in particular. Wikidata also allows for multilingual documentation, which furthers the trend of global inclusivity in the electronic literature community. This migration, then, revitalizes CELL, The Index, and provides new opportunities to make metadata about electronic literature available to a wider audience in a sustainable manner, as well as promote individual electronic literature databases who have been doing foundational work over the last decades.
This panel has a dual purpose. We will introduce this new phase of CELL by sharing our current progress and results, as well as our plans to add a host of new consortium members. For this, we invite people working on databases who would like to become CELL members. Additionally, this session serves a broader purpose of discussing the use of Wikidata to document electronic literature and, therefore, is of interest to anyone who is considering using existing Wikidata for their research or to build a their own Wikibase.
Recommended Citation
Ackermans, Hannah; Tabbi, Joseph; Pyke, Tegan; and Robinson, Colin, "(Un)Linked Open Data: Documenting E-lit in Wikidata" (2024). ELO (Un)linked 2024. 29.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/hypertextsandfictions/schedule/29
(Un)Linked Open Data: Documenting E-lit in Wikidata
Hypertexts & Fictions
This panel introduces the renewed Consortium on Electronic Literature: CELL, The Index.
Since its inception in 2009, CELL has been a vital resource for cross-database collaboration. The vigorous database-building practices in the field of electronic literature have been key in establishing the field, while demonstrating the diversity of electronic literature across cultures. The CELL Search Engine has been a community-driven project to provide access to all these databases in one platform. Databases have often mentioned their prospective inclusion in CELL from their inception.
After some years of inactivity of the CELL project, the Center for Digital Narrative (University of Bergen, Norway) is revitalizing this common goal as CELL, The Index. CELL, The Index has a new interface, infrastructure, and data model that will ensure longevity and lessen the burden on individual scholars. With the rise of linked open data, we have chosen to use the collaborative, open-data knowledge graph Wikidata. Advantages of Wikidata are numerous. As a document-oriented database, Wikidata is ideally suited to the weird and wonderful ways that electronic literature breaks the boundaries of what literature and art can be. Based on our carefully developed data model, the documentation on the Wikidata platform can be expansive. At the same time, we will create our own focused environment with the taxonomy that is relevant to the electronic literature community in particular. Wikidata also allows for multilingual documentation, which furthers the trend of global inclusivity in the electronic literature community. This migration, then, revitalizes CELL, The Index, and provides new opportunities to make metadata about electronic literature available to a wider audience in a sustainable manner, as well as promote individual electronic literature databases who have been doing foundational work over the last decades.
This panel has a dual purpose. We will introduce this new phase of CELL by sharing our current progress and results, as well as our plans to add a host of new consortium members. For this, we invite people working on databases who would like to become CELL members. Additionally, this session serves a broader purpose of discussing the use of Wikidata to document electronic literature and, therefore, is of interest to anyone who is considering using existing Wikidata for their research or to build a their own Wikibase.
Bio
HANNAH ACKERMANS is a postdoctoral researcher within the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. Ackermans' postdoctoral research investigates the role of embodiment and (dis)ability in electronic literature's functioning, accounting for both the bodymind of the implied reader and the potential diversity of readers' bodyminds. As part of their postdoc, Ackermans is coordinating the Living Glossary of Digital Narrative, the Digital Narrative Knowledge Base, and the CELL project.
JOSEPH TABBI is an American academic and literary theorist who relocated to the University of Bergen in 2019. He has made significant contributions to the field of experimental American fiction in both print and electronic media. He is the author of Cognitive Fictions (2002) and Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (1995). He was the first scholar granted access to the William Gaddis archives, and is the author of Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis (2015). He edited The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature (2017), and Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (2020). He continues to co-edit the scholarly journal electronic book review (ebr), which he founded in the mid-1990s with Mark Amerika. Tabbi is also a founding member and Director of the Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL). A National Endowment for the Humanities grant (2014) enabled member literary databases worldwide to build a search engine for interoperability. An earlier, startup grant from the NEH, for the development of the Electronic Literature Directory, provided a model for later databases worldwide that are now a part of the Consortium. A “manifesto” for the project can be found at www.cellproject.net.
TEGAN PYKE is a PhD candidate in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her research lies in the realm of digital literature, focusing on its design, archival, canonisation, and the differences between institutional versus community practice, with a particular interest in collaborative and emergent narratives. In 2021, she worked with the British Library formulating a quality assurance process for the New Media Writing Prize archival collection.