Digital paths to material objects: Online projects of literary archives

In the past few years, literary archives have increasingly made efforts to reach (new) users via digital channels. However, it is interesting to note that the forms of presentation chosen for the projects that make archival material available online often neither rely on traditional modes of philological text processing (editions) nor on established popular structuring of web content (as can be found in social media). Archives develop new ways of structuring content by not providing their entire material online, but rather developing a service for their users by creating ‘maps’, ‘guides’ or ‘paths’ through their material in their digital projects. This poster will discuss these special modes of archival representation online, which involves interpretation by the expert creators of online projects as a vital intermediate step that influences the structure of the online projects as well as the users’ perspective on the material in its digital as well as analogue form. Two Austrian web projects (Handkeonline and Karl Kraus Online) will be used as examples to illustrate this analysis.