The Search for Electronic Literature Leads to the CELL Project
For Immediate Release
— Morgantown, WV
Announcing Cell Project, a new multi-database search for information on electronic literature, created by the Electronic Literature Organization in collaboration with 10 research centers around the world.
The Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL) is an open access, non-commercial resource offering centralized access to literary databases, archives, and institutional programs in the literary arts and scholarship, with a focus on electronic literature.
The purpose of CELL is to better identify works as literary and make the evolving field of born (and genetically) digital writing visible on a global scale. The project will develop communities and best practices in research in born digital literature.
According to Project Leader Sandy Baldwin, “For the first time, users can get a view of the entire field and ask critical research questions. As the database evolves, it will become the go-to site for discoveries in electronic literature. We will research unrecognized aspects of the field, illuminate global issues, and map the ‘literariness’ of electronic literature.”
Although the search engine is Open Access, the content of the databases is edited according to scholarly standards. That editorial oversight will make the CELL site a valuable resource for students of electronic literature.
More than an “e-lit Google,†CELL offers a “tool for curated, international research into digital literature,†according to Baldwin.
The consortium will draw upon the following data centers:
- The ELO’s Electronic Literature Directory (ELD);
- Â electronic book review (ebr), one of the oldest all-online peer-reviewed journals
- Â Digital Language Arts Collection, Brown University Digital Repository
- Â ADELTA (Australian Directory for Electronic Literature and Text-based Art), University of Western Sydney (Australia)
- Hypermedia, Art, and Literature Directory, Laboratoire NT2, Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada)
- The ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, University of Bergen (Norway)
- ADEL – Archive of German Electronic Literature, University of Siegen (Germany)
- PO.EX – Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Poetry, University Fernando Pessoa (Portugal)
- Hermeneia, Literary Studies and Digital Technologies Research Group, Universitat de Barcelona (Spain); CELL White Paper DRAFT 7
- I ♥ E-Poetry, University of Puerto Rico: Mayagüez (Puerto Rico)
The project was sponsored by these partners along with the National Endowment for the Humanities. The management of the project is coordinated by the Center for Literary Computing at West Virginia University, and the technical development takes place at NT2 Lab in Montreal.
By the ELO 2015 Conference in Bergen, up to six sites will be connected to the search.
For more information, contact Sandy Baldwin sbaldwin66 at gmail