The Anatomy of a Digital Object

1. The Anatomy of a Digital Object Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Maryland e(X)literature UCSB, April 2003 Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

2. Let’s talk about bibliography. “Bibliography? Isn’t that just making lists and stuff?” [Audience yawns and reaches for coffee. After all, it’s 9:00 AM. Plus, he’s using PowerPoint.] Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

3. Wrong. Actually, bibliography is the oldest and most sophisticated form of media studies we have (says Kirschenbaum). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

4. Media studies ca. 1933 . . . “Bibliography is the study of books as tangible objects. It examines the materials of which they are made and the manner in which those materials are put together. It traces their place and mode of origin, and the subsequent adventures that have befallen them. It is not concerned with their contents in a literary sense, but it is certainly concerned with the signs and symbols they contain (apart from their significance) for the manner in which these marks are written or impressed is a very relevant bibliographical fact.” –W. W. Greg Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

5. Properly speaking, there are three kinds of bibliography: • Enumerative Bibliography • Analytical or Physical Bibliography • Descriptive Bibliography Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

6. Enumerative Bibliography • This is the “making lists” branch of bibliography. • The first enumerative bibliographer may have been Callimachus of Cyrene (ca. 310-240 B.C.), who compiled a 120-volume catalog of the library at Alexandria. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

7. Analytical or Physical Bibliography • Forensic examination of book-object for material evidence of its own production. • Foundation of textual editing and literary criticism. • For example, “decoding” the five different compositors who set the type for the first edition of Hawthorne’s novel Fanshawe. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

8. Descriptive Bibliography • Outgrowth of analytical bibliography. • Rigorous, standardized, many would even want to say scientific description of books as physical objects. • Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Princeton UP, 1949). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

9. Quoth Bowers: “Many a literary critic has investigated the past ownership and mechanical condition of his second-hand automobile, or the pedigree and training of his dog, more thoroughly than he has looked into the qualifications of the text on which his critical theories rest.” Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

10. OK, I’m awake now, but . . . “What’s all this got to do with electronic literature, much less e(X)literature?” Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

11. Well, electronic literature’s done a good job with enumerative bibliography . . . Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

12. . . . but our use of analytical and descriptive bibliography is not very far along at all. Kirschenbaum thinks this has something to do with the fact that until fairly recently, the widespread prejudice was that electronic objects were simply “immaterial” (presumably because you can’t reach out and touch them). Kirschenbaum calls this the “haptic fallacy.” Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

13. Anyway, electronic objects exist in space and time . . . Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

14. And they are to a certain extent self-documenting . . . Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

15. . . . but in the electronic literature community we lack a sophisticated vocabulary for expressing the synchronic and diachronic changes that inform the material make-up of digital objects. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

16. Will the realafternoon please stand up? First edition of afternoon (1987, Mac) and third edition (1992, PC). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

17. And bibliography can change all that? Yes, I think it can. And PAD is just the group to do it. So for the rest of my time, I’m going to concentrate on descriptive bibliography, and work towards some principles of computational description. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

18. In Bowers’ words, descriptive bibliography seeks to . . . “Furnish a detailed, analytical record of the physical characteristics of a book which would simultaneously serve as a trustworthy source of identification and as a medium to bring an absent book before a reader’s eyes” (vii). Hmm, kind of sounds like metadata, doesn’t it? Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

19. Put another way (still Bowers): “The concern of the descriptive bibliographer is to examine every available copy of an edition of a book in order to describe in bibliographical terms the characteristics of an ideal copy of this edition, to distinguish between issues and variants of the edition, to explain and describe the printing and textual history of the edition, and finally to arrange it in a correct and logical relationship to other editions” (6). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

20. But bear in mind (with Bowers): “The description and analysis contained in a bibliography is not intended to exist on a factual basis as an end in itself. Bibliography would be a limited science indeed if collection of external facts were its sole reason for existence. True bibliography is the bridge to textual, which is to say literary, criticism. The history of an author’s book is an intimate part of the literary history of that author” (8-9). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

21. Bowers’ terminology for hand-printed books: • Edition • Impression • Issue • State • Ideal Copy Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

22. My very provisional terminology for describing digital objects: • Release • Version • Layer • Object • State • Instance • Copy Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

23. Consider as an example David Blair’s hypermedia WAXWEB . . . • Extruded from his 1991 film, Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (90 min). • In 1993, Wax became the first feature-length film to be distributed over the Internet’s high-bandwidth M-Bone. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

24. WAXWEB (1994-2003)http://www.waxweb.org • Storyspace • MOO • 2000 HTML nodes and 25,000 links • 4800 JPEG image files • 560 MPEG video files • 2200 WAV audio files • 300 VRML renderings • Final [?] CD-ROM Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

25. Layer • A layer comprises all elements of an electronic work that are both computationally compatible and functionally integrated. When one or more elements are ported such that the whole is no longer computationally compatible or functionally integrated, then a new layer is created. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

26. Version • Layers can be distinguished by assigning them versions. David Blair versions WAXWEB as follows: “1.0 was the first web version, with the html constructed by the MOO, using text, picture, movie; 2.0 added the old vrml there are two versions up now... the output of the MOO, which I started to work with in 95 before finally just tossing it out, putatively called 3.0 alpha. The finished version is just Waxweb.” Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

27. Release • Different releases of the work are all computationally compatible with one another, but they are not functionally integrated. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

28. Object • A generic identifier for some discrete digital entity, such as a file (and a file can itself be defined as a named collection of data that persists over time). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

29. State A state refers to the computational composition of an object in some particular data format. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

30. Instance • An instance refers to a particular object in a particular state as presented in a particular software environment. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

31. Copy • A copy refers to one precise and particular instance of one particular state of an object. (If I download an image in JPEG format from the Web, the copy my browser caches is ontologically distinct (even though it is computationally identical) to the copy on the server.) Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

32. Putting it all together . . . In the slide that follows, one single digital object (this frame of video from the original Wax film) is presented in two separate states (RealVideo and JPEG) and four separate instances, all distributed across three layers and versions of the work. (Note that this display does not necessarily include all instances or states of the object.) Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

33. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

34. Very nice, but isn’t the library science already there? METS and all that? No, I don’t think so. As I understand them, METS (and other things like it) do not help with the problem of expressing relationships between multiple versions and states of an individual work. This is what’s at the heart of the bibliographical enterprise, and it’s a perspective that’s essential for PAD. Oh, and about that word “work” . . . Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

35. Exactly what is the work here? Either one? Both together? Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

36. The other CVS . . . Which is why I think we can also learn a lot from developer’s tools, such as the open source Concurrent Versions System (CVS): “A version control system maintains an organized set of all the versions of files that are made over time. Version control systems allow people to go back to previous revisions of individual files, and to compare any two revisions to view the changes between them. In this way, version control keeps a historically accurate and retrievable log of a file's revisions.” http://www.cvshome.org Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

37. Like Howard, Bowers understood the importance of standards . . . “It is necessary in the extreme for bibliographers (like chemists or mathematicians) to agree on a standard and uniform system of notation, to be followed in all its details and to be maintained rigidly in their works. Personal prejudice against one or other device should not be permitted to interfere with the adoption of all details of a standard system” (24). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

38. Recommendations for PAD: • Recognize the valueof the critical knowledge analytical and descriptive bibliography afford for traditional literary studies; • Helpfosteranalytical and descriptive bibliographical practices for the electronic literature community by developing and disseminating standardized principles of computational description (not necessarily mine here!) for the digital objects that matter to us; • Tightly coupleany such principles of computational description to our technical metadata and encoding practices. Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)

39. Shameless self-promotion: • Kirschenbaum, “Editing the Interface: Textual Studies and First-Generation Electronic Objects.” TEXT 14 (2002): 15-51. • Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the New Textuality (forthcoming, MIT Press). Anatomy of a Digital Object (Kirschenbaum)