Electronic Literature Lab

The Electronic Literature Lab, housed in Washington State University, Vancouver, maintains obsolete computers and hardware to preserve and present early electronic literature, video games, and internet works such as Instagram zines.^[1]

Part of the Electronic Literature Lab housed in the Washington State University at Vancouver

Laboratory description

The Electronic Literature Lab holds the hardware and software that the NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space depends on to show electronic literature works in their original environment.^[2] The lab forms the center of archiving electronic literature for the Electronic Literature Organization.^[3] Because electronic literature works were built on specific hardware, software, and platforms, these works are now largely inaccessible as hardware and software becomes obsolete.^[4] The lab also hosts video games, such as Amnesia.^[5]

As Kristin Lillvis and Melinda White note, "the Electronic Literature Lab has preserved many of these works in the collection through restoration processes involving migration and emulation to make them once-again accessible."^[6] The lab documents these archival processes in scholarly publications such as The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction (2023)^[7] and Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing (2018).^[8] As Jan Beatens explained, Stuart Moulthrop and Dene Grigar explicate the challenges in this pioneering field of preserving electronic literature in the Electronic Literature Lab.^[9]

History and operations

Dene Grigar founded and directs this lab.^[10] She describes her theory of preservation for electronic items in her 2025 Ted Talk Making the Virtual Real and the Real Virtual^[11]

The lab contains over 80 vintage computers from 1977 onwards.^[12]

Awards and grants

The lab received an Open Scholarship Award from the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute in 2022.^[13] Electronic literature critics, such as Astrid Ensslin and Mariusz Pisarski, have collaborated with WSUV students and professors to analyze and archive electronic literature works.^[14]