Paper presentation at MLA 2015.

1. Virtual Verse in the Library:
Capturing Online-Only Poetry for
Scholarship and Preservation
Rachel A. Fleming-May
University of Tennessee
@rachelf_m
Harriett E. Green
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
@greenharr
MLA 2015
“What Does It Mean to Publish? New Forms of Scholarly Communication”
January 8, 2015 | #s176 #mla15

2. “As glossy magazines die by the dozen and blogs
become increasingly influential, we face the reality that
print venues…are rapidly ceding ground to Web-based
publishing.”
—Sandra Beasley, Poets & Writers (2009)
@greenharr #s176 #mla15

3. Changing Landscape
The Poets & Writers and Council of Literary
Magazines and Presses databases of literary
publishers and journals currently feature nearly 800
venues that publish online-only poetry, even if the
title has a print counterpart.
@greenharr #s176 #mla15

4. E-Literature and the Role of
Libraries?
“Though it would be impossible for even a large staff
of librarians to track and document everything available
electronically, some effort needs to be made. . . . The
current challenge seems to be to expand the library’s
responsibility beyond information of the past to
include information that is being generated in the
moment.”
—Jake Berry, interview in The Serials Librarian
@greenharr #s176 #mla15

5. While individual
poems and short
stories published in
many print titles are
indexed…

6. Very few poems that appear on the
web only are indexed in standard
sources…
Even if they are published on the
web pages of print publications.

7. The Result?
Poems published in
web-only publications
are discoverable only
by “known-item”
searching: by title
and/or author.

8. Existing Indexes and Archives
• Electronic Literature Organization (ELO): ELO Directory, Electronic
Literature Collection vols. 1-2
• ELMCIP Knowledge Base
• CELL: Australian Directory of Electronic Literature and Art (ADELTA), nt2
Canada, Arquivo Digital da Literatura Experimental Portuguesa, LitNet, ELO,
ELMCIP
• PennSound
• Univ. of Buffalo Electronic Poetry Center
• UbuWeb
• From the Fishouse
• New Pages
• Websites: Poetry Foundation, American Academy of Poets, Woodberry Poetry
Room

9. Virtual Verse in the Library
• Funded by 1-year Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS) National Leadership Planning
Grant
• Examine issues related to creating an index of
online-only poetry:
• Stakeholders’ needs and uses?
• What content to include?
• Features and functionality?
http://virtualverse.weebly.com/
@greenharr #s176 #mla15

10. Research Design:
Environmental Scan
• Examine current efforts and potential models: ELO
Directory, ELMCIP, etc.
• Built index of over 900 publishing outlets
• Sample analysis of publishing frequency and scope:
• Number of issues
• Poems per issue.

11. Research Design: Stakeholder
Consultations
• Surveys:
• 960 Creative Writing Faculty, 12.5% response
• 152 Humanities Librarians, 58% response
• 945 Literary Editors/Publishers, 13.4% response
• Interviews: 7 creative writing faculty, 7 librarians, 5
editors
• Gathered from Poets & Writers magazine database,
CLMP online directory, universities’ directories

12. Key Findings
Scholarly Communications and research
practices with online poetry
• How and why they find and access online works
• Functionalities and Tools
- How would they use an index?
- Preferred functionalities that the respondents
desire in an index/archive of e-poetry
• Digital Preservation Needs

13. What is Scholarly Communications?
“The system through which research and other
scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality,
disseminated to the scholarly community, and
preserved for future use. The system includes both
formal means of communication, such as publication in
peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as
electronic listservs.”
Association for College and Research Libraries

14. Open Access
The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars
to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals
without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge.
The new technology is the internet. The public good they
make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of
the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free
and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars,
teachers, students, and other curious minds.
Budapest Open Access Initiative

15. Open Access and the Humanities
“Open-access scholarship has the potential to reach a broad
spectrum of potentially interested publics. We in the
humanities often resist opening our work to these publics,
however, fearing the consequences of such openness….
Increasing the discoverability of scholarly work on the
web, making it available to a broader readership, is a
good thing, not just for the individual scholar but for
the entirety of the field in which he or she works.”
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Journal of Scholarly Publishing

16. What Did They Say?

17. Scholarly Communications:
Discovery of Works
“Usually I search for a poem or poet, either for teaching
purposes (poetry from tradition, generally), or to get a brief
look at the work of a poet with whom I'm unfamiliar. Very
occasionally I look at something like Poetry magazine online.
Sometimes I will follow links to work that I'm notified of by e-
mail.” (Faculty)
“Personal website or just works published online - another
bonus of online publication [is] instant gratification for a reader
interested in someone's work.” (Publisher)
“I tend to peruse the online version of print journals mostly. I
do also use search engines. Rarely do I go directly to an author
site or some other non-juried (or minimally juried) source.”
(Publisher)

18. Tools for Scholarly Communication
• “Some sort of 'poetry reading' situations, wherein audio is
combined with the written word. A conference of sorts
wherein poets could queue up and read their pieces, receive
feedback, etc.” (Publisher)
• Social media tools. I think that if you can convince a lot of
online journals to work with you, you might be able to
develop a badge/button that a reader could click to ‘Add to’
a personalized version of your online archive.” (Publisher)

19. Tools for Scholarly Communication
“This would be harder to do, but I'd like a curated list of which on-line
only journals are most respected. For example, which online journals have
been awarded Pushcart Prizes; which online journals have been
acknowledged in Best American Poetry series. This kind of selected info
would make it far more enjoyable and practical to access poetry on the
Web.” (Faculty)
“A place for reviews and evaluations of these sources. A way to maybe
preserve some of these publications when they go under. I know I have
provided links to e-zines only to find out that they closed up shop and
there's no access to what was there before.” (Librarian)

20. Publishing Practices: Online v. Print
“I want my name to be online and searchable. Most print journals
release 500 or fewer issues. That’s ‘most’ of them. I am aware of the
bigger journals that release thousands as well. Still, print is not
archivable. If my work is online, it stays there until the journals
website possible goes under.” (Publisher/poet)
“I prefer print publications, but with the current massive presence of
poetry online, one wants to have a few available there for people who
search for my name specifically.” (Faculty)
“I submit to both. I think online publication helps a poet gain
visibility better than print publication, but that fact doesn't factor into
my decision whether to submit or not... I just submit to the magazines
that publish poems I like, whether they're print or online.” (Faculty)

21. Scholarly Communications:
Exposure of Their Work
“It seemed more important for some of my poems to be
available online, for anyone to read, forever, easy to find
through googling, easy to link to on my own website, etc. I
do appreciate when a print publication also publishes online
on a different schedule, like Boston Review.”
(Publisher/Poet)
“Online poems reach more readers. It’s that simple. I also
think they can go virual in useful ways.” (Faculty)
“More and more, if a poem is not online it does not exist.”
(Faculty)

22. Copyright and Intellectual Integrity
• “I think one of the obstacles for poets, who can be
nervous about on-line publication, is their perception that
they can easily lose ‘control’ of the poem—that others
can not only easily distribute, but also easily change,
manipulate, or remix the poem.” (Faculty)
• “[Online publishing] leads to plagiarism. People have
taken my poetry and reproduced it incorrectly, destroying
line breaks etc. Pieces of my poems have been taken and
used for all sorts of nonsense like advertisements.”
(Faculty)

23. Other Challenges
“As an assistant professor, it was made clear to me that on-line
publications would not rate in tenure deliberations.” (Faculty)
“E-Journals are ephemeral and often disappear quickly. I've never had it
happen to me, but I know that sometimes, one can publish in an online
journal and that online journal will suddenly disappear. Another
challenge: among the more powerful literati, there's still a strong
prejudice against publishing online.” (Publisher)
“Reliable websites. Nothing else, as reputable roadmap is still in print
not web - web is even at best (as archive) secondary/parasitic on
publications in the real world, with real editors and publishers. The web,
like the real world, is crammed with wannabe rubbish.” (Faculty)
“There is also a loss of tactile sensation from book to screen that is
changing what well designed typography means.” (Publisher)

24. Digital Literature and Scholarly
Practice
“For me it is about an expanded set of artistic tools,
presences, venues: diversity and range. It is not about
*reducing* the range of these experiences to a digital
experience.” (Faculty/Poet)
“In general, I value the egalitarian, open quality of the
internet. Everyone can get involved in the conversation,
and, if the conversation is therefore sometimes
unhelpfully chaotic, that's a small price to pay.”
(Faculty)

25. Scholarly Communication Lifecycle
FACULTY/WRITERS:
• Discover and connect with other writers and works
• Promotion & tenure: how to find, access, and evaluate the quality of
online-only magazines?
PUBLISHERS:
• How to effectively publish and sustain online-only work?
LIBRARIANS:
• How to provide access and preservation of online work
ALL: Need tools to discover, access, and interact with online literature

26. Looking Ahead

27. What’s Next?
• Forthcoming JASIST article with in-depth analyses
of findings
• How do we build an index of digital literature that
integrates into the practices of of creative writing
faculty, literary publishers, and information
professionals today?
“Recognition that the future is now, and it is online -
whether to be browsed, downloaded, or archived.”—
Faculty Respondent

28. References
Beasley, Sandra. “From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals.” Poets & Writers 37,
no 3 (2009). http://www.pw.org/content/page_pixels_evolution_online_journals.
May, Alan. “Interview with Jake Berry, Editor of Outré, Artifact Collective Texts, Anomaly,
The Experioddicist, and Currently 9th St. Laboratories.” Serials Librarian 55, no. 1/2 (2008):
296- 303.
Paling, Stephen and Michael Nilan. “Technology, Genres, and Value Change: The Case of
Little Magazines.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57, no. 7
(2006): 862-872.
Stevens, Jen. “Long-Term Literary E-Zine Stability: Issues and Access in Libraries.” Technical
Services Quarterly 22, no.1 (2004): 21–32. DOI: 10.1300/J124v22n01_03
Stevens, Jen and McCord, Sarah K. "Long-Term Literary E-Zine Stability: A Predictive
Model.” Technical Services Quarterly 22, no. 3 (2005): 29-45. DOI: 10.1300/J124v22n03_03
Sukovic, Suzana. “Convergent Flows: Humanities Scholars and Their Interactions with
Electronic Texts.” Library Quarterly 78, no. 3 (2008): 263-284.

29. Picture Credits
• "the written word,” by palo, on Flickr,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/paloetic/638153865
1
• "Magnifying Glass,” by Auntie P, on Flickr,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/17135231
• "Paris: telescope on Eiffel Tower // Teleskop auf
dem Eiffelturm” by brongaeh, on Flickr,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brongaeh/9933790
456

30. THANK YOU!
Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
green19@illinois.edu
@greenharr
DOWNLOAD SLIDES AT:
http://virtualverse.weebly.com