Abstract
Sarah Smith’s King of Space, published in 1991, is the first work of science fiction produced as electronic literature. Released on a 3.5-in. floppy disk and requiring a Macintosh computer running System Software 7.0-MacOS 9x, it is now inaccessible to scholars interested in early digital literary forms, particularly of science fiction by women authors. Because this work is interactive and involves animations, images, sound, and words, preserving it requires an approach that retains as much of these experiences as possible for future audiences. To accomplish this task, our lab––the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver––used the Pathfinders methodology developed by Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, adding to it Live Stream play-throughs on YouTube promoted through social media channels. This essay outlines our process and discusses the potential of this methodology for preserving other kinds of multimedia and interactive work.
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Notes
See Electronic Literature Lab web site, http://dtc-wsuv.org/wp/ell/.
MOMA Library Catalog reference for Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger may be found at: http://arcade.nyarc.org/record=b550258~S8
“Examination” is the short animated poem for the web that Patricia Monagham created along with the many books she wrote and published. It is the only work of e-lit by her known to exist. After going off- and online periodically while the author herself maintained the interactive version, the work has remained offline after the author passed away in 2012.
The website for the Traversal performance is available here: http://dtcwsuv.org/wp/ell/2017/09/24/traversal-ofsarah-smiths-king-of-space/. The captured video recording of that broadcast is available here: https://youtu.be/kXJIcWctuDM, and the social media streams are preserved here: https://storify.com/nnschiller/king-of-spacea-live-elit-pathfinder-traversal.
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Schiller, N., Grigar, D. Born digital preservation of e-lit: a live internet traversal of Sarah Smith’s King of Space. Int J Digit Humanities 1, 47–57 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-019-00004-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42803-019-00004-w