A digital catalogue of digital literature

Applicant: dr. David Peeters (Tilburg University)

This project will develop and launch an online catalogue of digital literature. The current absence of an adequate digital catalogue of digital literature (e.g., literary texts presented in virtual reality, interactive poems experienced via smartphones) hampers scientific research in the humanities and the social sciences, contributes to the existing mismatch between the current content of secondary school education and the interests of present-day pupils, and limits public libraries in what products they can offer. We hence need an overview of currently available expressions of digital literature. This overview needs to be publicly available as a digital catalogue. Our methodology combines the documentation of currently available products of digital literature with the development of the digital catalogue. We will find and categorize available products of digital literature created in the Netherlands between 2000 and 2021, and turn this collection into a digital catalogue that meets the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principle. This novel digital resource, shared long- term via CLARIAH, will be fundamental for interdisciplinary SSH-research into contemporary literary culture. It will be pivotal in matching educational content with pupils’ interests. It will allow libraries to offer their public a more contemporary collection that includes state-of-the- art expressions of digital literature.