A Kaleidoscope of Digital American Literature
Files
Penn collection
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Contributor
Abstract
The word kaleidoscope comes from a Greek phrase meaning "to view a beautiful form," and this report makes the leap of faith that "all scholarship is beautiful" (Ayers 2005b). This review is divided into three major sections. Part I offers a sampling of the types of digital resources currently available or under development in support of American literature and identifies the prevailing concerns of specialists in the field as expressed during interviews conducted between July 2004 and May 2005. Part two of the report consolidates the results of these interviews with an exploration of resources currently available to illustrate, on the one hand, a kaleidoscope of differing attitudes and assessments, and, on the other, an underlying design that gives shape to the parts. Part three examines six categories of digital work in progress: (1) quality-controlled subject gateways, (2) author studies, (3) public domain e-book collections and alternative publishing models, (4) proprietary reference resources and full-text primary source collections, (5) collections by design, and (6) teaching applications. This survey is informed by a selective review of the recent literature, focusing especially on contributions from scholars that have appeared in discipline-based journals.