Toward a Semantic Literary Web: Setting a Direction for the Electronic Literature Organization’s Directory (2007)

Electronic Literature is not just a "thing" or a "medium" or even a body of "works" in various "genres." It is not poetry, fiction, hypertext, gaming, codework, or some new admixture of all these practices. E-Literature is, arguably, an emerging cultural form, as much a collective creation of new terms and keywords as it is the production of new literary objects. Both the "works" and their terms of description need to be tracked and referenced. Hence, a Directory of Electronic Literature needs to be, in the first place, a site where readers and (necessarily) authors are given the ability to identify, name, tag, describe, and legitimate works of literature written and circulating within electronic media. This essay grew out of practical debates among the ELO's Working Group on the Directory, established in the Spring of 2005 and active through the Winter of 2006. The essay offers a set of practical recommendations for development, links to potentially affiliated sites, and an overall vision of how literary form is created in a networked culture. The essay is intended to set a direction for the next phase of Directory development (Fall 2007), central to the ELO's mission of making a place for literary work (and works) in electronic environments. Finally, and as yet tentatively, the essay offers speculations on how this curatorial activity can be coordinated with similar initiatives in the arts and with stakeholders in the current development of a Semantic Web.

Source: author's article abstract