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dc.contributor.authorAckermans, Hannah
dc.date.accessioned2021-05-06T09:40:14Z
dc.date.available2021-05-06T09:40:14Z
dc.date.created2020-10-26T11:29:01Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.identifier.issn1553-1139
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/11250/2753887
dc.description.abstractEngagement with public databases has become a leading way for scholars, artists, and readers alike to encounter works of electronic literature as well as get an overview of the field. Although acknowledged as an important and difficult process, database construction is, in practice, too often underestimated as merely a preparatory task in Digital Humanities. Through the conception of database criticism, I provide a critical apparatus to approach databases in terms of qualitative and aesthetic characteristics. Considering public databases as media texts, I take a digital hermeneutic approach to the reading strategies involved in engaging with databases. What follows is the presence of databases as cultural artifacts that are themselves studied in humanities and social science frameworks. It is in the interest of both the quality and esteem of the databases to develop ways to study and evaluate them parallel to academic reviews of monographs and edited collections. I offer a media-specific framework of four core vectors for database criticism: data and scope, experience, aesthetics, and labor. Building on Critical Data Studies, database criticism needs to identify the means and objectives of the database and thing along with those in reviewing the data. But a database is so much more than its data. A good database incites the pleasure of anticipation and this is determined by both the user and browsing experience. This is linked to the aesthetics of the database, which includes the accessibility of the database at its core. Finally, the explicit evaluation of labor addresses which value is placed on various tasks of developing and maintaining an academic database. My call for database criticism opens up ways to revalue the databases as dissemination of research and provide the opportunity to highlight all elements that we wish to be part of the field going forward.en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherThe emergent digital literary networken_US
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.7273/97p6-pt89
dc.rightsAttribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internasjonal*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.no*
dc.titleAppealing to Your Better Judgement: A Call for Database Criticismen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.typePeer revieweden_US
dc.description.versionpublishedVersionen_US
cristin.ispublishedtrue
cristin.fulltextoriginal
cristin.qualitycode1
dc.identifier.doi10.7273/97p6-pt89
dc.identifier.cristin1842229
dc.source.journalElectronic Book Review (EBR)en_US
dc.identifier.citationElectronic Book Review (EBR). 2020en_US


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Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internasjonal
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internasjonal