[EAS]e-Literature Directory

[pjk]

Subject:   e-Literature Directory

(from The Scout Report--September 22 2000)
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/current/index.html


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.