Hypertext novels. Twine stories. Kinetic poetry. Interactive Fiction. Generative literature.
Historical recordings of electronic literature performances, interviews, and readings. Artists’ and
scholars’ papers and essays. These are just some of archives found among the over 30 collections of
2500 works of born-digital literary art and other forms of media at the Electronic Literature
Organization’s The NEXT. Envisioned as a combination museum, library, and preservation site, The
NEXT maintains and makes its archives accessible for the next generationand responds to the growing
need for open-access, travel-free cultural and research experiences for today’s public and
scholars.
The Administrative Team consisted of eight members who oversaw The NEXT’s third phase of development.
Dr. Dene Grigar and Professor Suzanne Anderson co-taught the classroom and project components of the Senior Seminar.
Dene is Co-Founder, Managing Director, and Curator of The NEXT who provided the vision for all phases of this project. Dene is also the Director of the Electronic Literature Lab, the hub for all preservation activities of the Electronic Literature Organization and the management of The NEXT. She also mentored the students working on the Design Team, Web Team, and Promotions Team.
Suzanne mentored the students on the Visualization Team and the Video Team. Because she has taught animation at Washington State University for 25 years, she provided valuable insight and feedback throughout the project, particularly in creating virtual visualizations, 3D models, and animated assets, which helped form the rich virtual environments in The NEXT.
Kathleen Zoller served as Project Manager for Phase Three of The NEXT and directly managed the 38 other students working on the project across the five major production teams. Kathleen ensured that leadership meetings and class time ran smoothly by creating meeting agendas and ensuring each team received the resources it needed on a daily basis. She often fostered collaboration between teams when assets needed to be shared, borrowed, or further developed. Kathleen was in near constant communication with everyone working on the project and communicated directly with our client, the Electronic Literature Organization.
Katya Farinsky was the project’s Copyeditor and Research Assistant. Katya collaborated with Kathleen and each production team to edit copy for their specific project components. She created a copy style guide to incorporate with the Design Team’s Brand Book, worked with Video Team to create accessible video captions and archival documents for each interview, edited copy from Dene that was eventually implemented by the Web Team, and helped edit posts with the Promotions Team to maintain a consistent voice for the social media campaign.
Greg Philbrook has served as the Technical and Instructional Specialist for the CMDC program for over 10 years and has worked on The NEXT since its inception. On this project he worked directly with the Web & Database Team to develop the database structure and implementation for The NEXT and orchestrated many mission-critical projects components. He also worked with students individually to give them access to CMDC server space and templates for creating their portfolios. Greg’s support of the students in Senior Seminar and robust technical support across the project were truly invaluable.
Holly Slocum is the Project Manager in the Electronic Literature Lab and has worked on The NEXT since its inception. She lent her vision for the overall design of The NEXT, creating the development of the templates for each of its spaces. She also worked across the production teams to help implement design components based on the prototypes she created. Holly is also a talented photographer who used her skills to produce a professional headshot for each of the 39 graduating seniors.
Richard Snyder is a PhD student in the Department of English at Washington State University Pullman who worked directly with Dene to create and refine the metadata for the many works in The NEXT.
Professor Nicholas Schiller is the Associate Director of the Electronic Literature Lab and a Librarian at Washington State University Vancouver. He is one of the four Co-Founder of The NEXT and has continued to serve as a consultant in the areas of metadata schemas, database models, and ingestion protocols.
Instructor
interface designer
Technical and Instructional Specialist
Metadata Specialist
Metadata Specialist, Librarian
The Web & Database Team worked tirelessly to integrate the work created by each production team into the spaces they coded for The NEXT using HTML5, Sass, Bootstrap, PHP, JavaScript, and jQuery.
The team specifically utilized open-source programing languages and non-proprietary software to ensure that their work would be lasting and accessible to future audiences.
Before the Web & Database Team created the code that instantiated over 3300 unique spaces in The NEXT, they created a new data model for The NEXT’s database that improved upon the previous Electronic Literature Organization Repository’s model that included the newly developed ELMS metadata schema.
Additionally, the Web & Development Team worked with the Design Team to produce a series of dynamic and interactive data visualizations as well as nine interactive icons that make it possible for visitors to conceptualize the scope of the various components of The NEXT and to imbue an immersive, virtual experience for it.
The team has touched every space in The NEXT and created the project’s gig site that highlights the creative people who helped launch The NEXT during Phase Three.
The Promotions Team successfully devised and executed multiple social media campaigns across three prominent platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Each team member gained experience devising compelling copy, managing assets for over 300 unique posts, and posting content across all three campaign platforms.
To introduce The NEXT to members of the Electronic Literature Organization and the public, the Promotions Team also created a robust, three-phase campaign.
The team created a weekly schedule that regularly posted trailer videos, animated gifs, and static images across the campaign’s three platforms, five days a week, for three months.
In the final month of The NEXT’s development, the Promotions Team partnered with the Design Team to create over 2500 high quality thumbnail, highlight, and gallery images for over 680 individual works across nine collections of born-digital literary work.
Both teams conducted rigorous quality control checks to ensure each image was successfully integrated throughout over 3300 unique spaces.
The Design Team produced a large body of work that can be seen across each unique space in The NEXT. The first three projects the Design team tackled were creating three immersive carousel images for the Welcome Space, producing a comprehensive Brand Book for The NEXT, and designing a series of nine cohesive interactive icons leading to various spaces in The NEXT.
Each icon was uniquely designed to represent six major collection areas in The NEXT as well as for the Labor, Funds, and Materials categories in the Donate Space.
After completing these tasks, the Design Team created a series of montage-style images that are prominently featured in spaces, including the About Space, Contact Space, and People Space.
In the final month of development, the Design Team partnered with the Promotions Team to create over 2500 high quality thumbnail, highlight, and gallery images for over 680 individual works across nine collections of born-digital literary work.
Both teams conducted rigorous quality control checks to ensure each image was successfully integrated throughout over 3300 unique spaces.
The Visualization Team produced a substantial amount of 2D and 3D assets for spaces in The NEXT.
Two of the first projects the Visualization Team undertook were creating an animated logo for The NEXT and visualizing the behaviors of the nine different interactive icons produced by the Design Team.
After completing those tasks, the Visualization Team created over 40 unique gifs and six screenshots for 15 different works of born-digital literature collected in The NEXT that are currently inaccessible due to hardware, software, or copyright restrictions, thus allowing visitors to experience aspects of these works.
In addition to creating gifs, the team also hand-modeled, textured, and animated over 20 high-fidelity 3D models of vintage Apple computers, packaging used for distributing early hypertexts, floppy disks, and other physical artifacts that highlight the depth and breadth of The NEXT’s collections.
These models were developed into 14 gifs, 14 turntable videos, and 14 complimentary thumbnail images seen throughout The NEXT. In the final month of development, the Visualization Team produced multiple 3D animations and animated infographics for The NEXT.
The Video Team created over 30 unique videos to welcome visitors to The NEXT, to introduce six online journals containing born-digital literary work, and to document important information for future scholars.
The team conducted thorough research to create personalized interview documents for each of the 13 artists and scholars they interviewed. The interviews were recorded and converted into two types of videos: one-minute trailers that welcome visitors to individual collections in The NEXT, and long-form videos of the full interviews for visitors and scholars to view on The NEXT’s Vimeo channel.
Additionally, the Video Team created highly stylized trailers for six online journals in The NEXT that capture the essence of each journal and the works it published. In the final month of development, members of the Video Team created a trailer for The NEXT that introduces visitors to the virtual environment by encapsulating aspects from each space in The NEXT.
The trailer is prominently featured near the top of the Welcome Space so that it is easily accessed by visitors in The NEXT.
