Testing LORE with an Eye on ASAL 2010.

Aus-e-Lit development is approaching a very busy time. Members of our testing group are planning small projects that can be supported by annotation and 'compound object' authoring tools (known as LORE: Literature Object Re-Use and Exchange) that our software engineers, Anna Gerber and Andrew Hyland, are busily 'refactoring' and 'debugging'. A new version of the tool is imminent, but video demos of older versions can be seen at the Aus-e-Lit Project page.

Our Aus-e-Lit testing group will propose a panel session to the organisers of ASAL 2010, UNSW, 7-10 July 2010. The projects will include explorations of textual scholarship and scholarly editing, adaptation, literary criticism, film studies and the relationship between poets and artists in the production of limited edition artist's books. Issues such as authorship, textual integrity, aesthetics and reception will be discussed with particular attention paid to the way we might talk about these issues within the emerging field of digital humanities. The major themes and issues will emerge through testing and I will report on them here.

Over the next few weeks I'll contribute posts that look more closely at the way LORE supports individual or collaborative annotation and guide you through the world of compound objects and the potential of the semantic web for those working with Australian writers, artists, publishers and readers. I'll talk more fully about the foundation of this project in the Open Archives Initiative and speculate where a project such as this might lead in the years to come. Discussion might also lead to proposals for new names for the thing that is currently known as a compound object! Your recommendations on this will be enthusiastically received, but 'Fred' will not be accepted.