At the Electronic Literature Organization 2026 Conference (which starts this week), members of the lab will give a workshop, entitled “Thinking Ahead about Your Legacy: A Workshop Aimed at Preparing Your Archives for Future Access.” Here is the information about it:
Led by Dene Grigar, Holly Slocum, Greg Philbrook, James Lesperance, and Ruth Woodcock
Electronic Literature Lab
Thursday, July 16, 2026
4:45-5:45
https://electronicliteraturelab.org/thinking-ahead-about-your-legacy.html
This workshop, led by members of the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver, is aimed at providing guidance to born-digital artists and scholars about preparing digital and physical archives for long-term access.
Workshop Schedule
Introduction: 5 minutes
Legacy: Why save your work? Dene, 5 minutes
Archives: What should you save? Holly, 5 minutes
- Canonical copies
- Ephemera
Archival practices: How do I save it? 25 minutes
- Documenting process(es): Holly
- Case Studies: Erik Loyer’s website; Richard Holeton’s physical archives; documenting installations
Editions and versions: James and Ruth
- Case Study: Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden. Versions and editions
- Alan Bigelow’s “This Is Not A Poem”. Flash version detection scripts and Ruffle
- Ted Warnell’s “Poem by Numbers”. Deprecated JavaScript update.
File structure and naming conventions: Greg
- Case Study: ELC 2
Metadata: Ruth
- Case Study: ELMS, MODS, Dublin Core, CELL
Formats: Greg
- Case Study: Web standards, Library of Congress standards, software
Finding aids and inventories: Dene
- Case Study: The Richard Holeton Collection
Repositories and Storage: Where do I keep it? 10 minutes
- Brick and Mortar: The NEXT, Rubenstein, Ransom, Stanford, and Brown
Virtual: The NEXT- Archival storage materials: Dene
- Digital storage solutions: Greg, Holly, and James
Q&A: 10 minutes