German-language digital literature magazines

The extensiveness and vagueness of the net, the appearance of new literary genres deviating from traditional print media and last but not least the fragility of the digital storage media are confronting literature researchers as well as librarians with completely new problems. With the technical development of the digital media, new forms of literary periodicals and new ways of distributing literature have emerged. Due to the special characteristics of the net and digital media this new form cannot be covered by conventional description and analysis methods. The project responds to a challenge facing literary scholars as well as librarians with respect to how to record, analyze and archive German-language digital literary magazines (i.e. magazines that can only be found on the internet). The main objective of the project will be to conduct a critical analysis of the enormous variety of existing literary e-magazines and new trends within the digital community. The project pursues three main objectives: 1. In the academic field: the analysis and commentary of the different forms of digital literature magazines and emerging trends. The fundamental aim will be to discuss our traditional understanding of the "journal" and the "magazine" in comparison with new forms of electronic provenance and to propose definitions that do justice to the diverse forms of periodically updated literature web sites found on the internet. Moreover, the objective will be to examine the kind of literature discussed in the digital literature magazines, their specific aesthetic and content- related characteristics and the kind of literary understanding conveyed. 2. In the documentation field: the compilation of a comprehensive collection of German-language digital literature magazines that have appeared since the worldwide web was established. A database will be created which is updated on a regular basis and can be accessed via the Innsbruck Newspaper Archive`s (IZA) home page: serving as a source of information for research, archives and libraries with the focus falling on the editorials, the programme and presentation of the individual web sites. 3. In the technological field: the systematical archiving of the examined sources in a digital repository. This process will be conducted by the Abteilung für Digitalisierung und elektronische Archivierung / DEA (Department for Digitization and Electronic Archiving) at the University of Innsbruck Library. The academic results of the project will be published in a digitalized version, accessible via the IZA`s home page.

The ongoing dislocation of literature from print to the internet and the new forms of communicating literature have a great impact not only on fictional literature and texts about literature, they change the whole approach to literary criticism. An essential problem is the preservation of these texts: Publications on the internet can appear and disappear in a short time. To archive, preserve and provide access to online magazines about literature the project followed three connected paths: (1) it analysed and described the various forms of presenting literature on the internet; (2) it tried to find as much as possible out about as many online magazines on literature in German as possible and (3) it created a web archive for online magazines. To achieve this many people and institutions were contacted and involved. Dr. Renate Giacomuzzi took part in several other projects on the topic. It was then possible to bring experts together in autumn 2009, the outcome of the conference "Digitale Literaturvermittlung" ("Communicating Literature Online") was recently published. So far 140 online magazines are described and harvested. Some have aggreed to open access, others allow restricted access, some only want to be preserved for future research. The bilangual homepage of the project (dilimag.literature.at) provides information on the magazines as well as the project. In addition a summary of the outcome of the project will appear in print in the near future.