NP web resource

[Doug Millison]

Electronic Literature Directory
http://directory.eliterature.org/
Electronic Literature Organization
http://www.eliterature.org/index2.html

The heart of the Electronic Literature Organization's Website, this
Website presents a "comprehensive directory of work" in the field of
electronic literature. Electronic literature is here defined as any
literature with an electronic element available on the Internet and
thus includes both experimental Internet novels and animated poems as
well as audio versions of traditional works that have been made
available on the Web, such as the postings of authors reading their
own works available at sites like the _Atlantic Monthly_'s Poetry
Pages. The directory's virtues include size -- there are over 400
links for poetry alone; thoroughness of annotations; and ease of
access -- the directory allows users to search and browse by author,
traditional genre, type of electronic media (hypertext, recording,
animated text, online generated text, and other multimedia), and
keyword. In addition, the creators have struck a balance between the
democratic impulse of the Internet and the desire for aesthetic
quality, allowing individuals to register to have their works appear
in the directory but requiring submission of their work to an
editorial review by the Directory's board before posting. With
individuals like the postmodern novelist Robert Coover and Larry
Wangberg, CEO of ZDTV, behind it, this Website promises to give
electronic literature a new level of visibility and credibility. A
good thing, even if Coover's prediction that "the vast majority of
the human race will simply do without literature" if they cannot find
it on the Web does strike us as a premature epitaph on that
four-centuries-old technology: the printed word. [DC]

The Scout Report for Social Sciences
Tue, 19 Sep 2000