Narrating the archive and archiving narrative: the electronic book and the logic of the index

The creation of my hypermedia work Index of Love, which narrates a love story as an archive of moments, images and objects recollected, also articulated for me the potential of the book as electronic text. The book has always existed as both narrative and archive. Tables of contents and indexes allow the book to function simultaneously as linear narrative and non-linear, searchable database. The book therefore has more in common with the so-called 'new media' of the 21st century than it does with the dominant 20th century media of film, video and audiotape, whose logic and mode of distribution are resolutely linear. My thesis is that the non-linear logic of new media brings to the fore an aspect of the book - the index - whose potential for the production of narrative is only just beginning to be explored. When a reader/user accesses an electronic work, such as a website, via its menu, they simultaneously experience it as narrative and archive. The narrative journey taken is created through the menu choices made. Within the electronic book, therefore, the index (or menu) has the potential to function as more than just an analytical or navigational tool. It has the potential to become a creative, structuring device. This opens up new possibilities for the book, particularly as, in its paper based form, the book indexes factual work, but not fiction. In the electronic book, however, the index offers as rich a potential for fictional narratives as it does for factual volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The iron trail [electronic resource] : A sketch. /

Electronic text and image data.

Notes on North America [electronic resource] : agricultural, economical, and social, /

Electronic text and image data.

Slavery and the remedy [electronic resource] : or, Principles and suggestions for a remedial code. /

First published 1856.

Lectures on the philosophy and practice of slavery [electronic resource] : as exhibited in the institution of domestic slavery in the United States: with the duties of masters to slaves. /

Electronic text and image data.

The daughter of the storage [electronic resource] : and other things in prose and verse /

The daughter of the storage.--A presentiment.--Captain Dunlevy's last trip.--The return to favor.--Somebody's mother.--The face at the window.--An experience.--The boarders.--Breakfast is my best meal.--The mother-bird.--The amigo.--Black Cross farm.--The critical bookstore.--A feast of reason.--City and country in the fall.--Table talk.--The escapade of a grandfather.--Self-sacrifice: a farce-tragedy.--The night before Christmas.

Fugitive slave law [electronic resource] : The religious duty of obedience to law; a sermon preached in the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, Nov. 24, 1850. /

Electronic text and image data.

The American citizen [electronic resource] : his rights and duties, according to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. /

Electronic text and image data.

Gazetteer of the St. Joseph Valley, Michigan and Indiana [electronic resource].

Electronic text and image data.

Law for the clergy [electronic resource] : a compilation of the statutes of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, relating to the duties of clergymen in the solemnization of marriage, the organization of churches and religious societies, and the protection of religious meetings and assemblies, with notes and practical forms, embracing a collation of the common law of marriage. /

Electronic text and image data.

Les chansons de Gautier d'Épinal. [electronic resource]

"Extrait des Mémoires de la Société néophilologique à Helsingfors, III."

Muskellunge management in Michigan [electronic resource] /

Bibliography: p. 21.

The Blind Sucker River [electronic resource] /

Electronic text and image data.

Digital Literacy in Story Spaces

This paper describes a study of digital literacy where the researcher worked with one group of English language arts teacher candidates and one of adolescents, reading and writing hypertext fiction. The findings suggest that the adolescent readers/writers brought a more flexible and multiliterate approach to their digital literacy processes than the teacher candidates.

Le livre sous la loupe : Nouvelles formes d’écriture électronique

Les fichiers qui accompagnent le document incluent une archive .jar du zoom-éditeur (qui peut être lancé via un browser) et des exemples de z-textes réalisés avec ce logiciel.