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Obtaining a Directory Account

 
Once you have an account with the Electronic Literature Directory, you can log in and update your listings whenever your biographical information changes or you publish new works.

If you are an author or publisher of electronic literature whose work is already listed in the ELD, simply go to our password recovery page to have your username and password immediately e-mailed to you. If you are not listed and want to see your work in the ELD, first read the following inclusion criteria to make sure that your work is suitable for inclusion.
 

Inclusion Criteria for Works

Work listed in the Electronic Literature Directory must be published in electronic format, either on the Web or on computer-readable media. We don't include works that have been exhibited in a physical exhibition space but not distributed to readers via the Web or on disk. Audio CDs, audiotapes, videotapes, and video DVDs are not eligible. We list only publications that could not be published in print without sacrificing or altering significant elements, such as multimedia content or interactive features. For inclusion in the ELD, a work must contain at least one of the qualifying electronic elements listed below. Note that most e-books do not qualify for inclusion. Printed works are also ineligible, even if they make use of hypertextual elements or some other type of non-electronic interactivity. Genres suitable for the ELD are listed below. If you are in doubt about the suitability of a particular work for inclusion, please contact the Database Director.

Suitable genres:

• poetry
• fiction
• drama (excluding most digitized movies)
• nonfiction of the following types:
  • creative nonfiction
  • literary criticism and theory
  • personal narrative or autobiography
  • in general anything else of interest to a literary audience

Unsuitable works:

• nonfiction of the following types:
  • reporting of news items
  • reference works or encyclopedia articles
  • manuals, instructional materials, self-help books
  • highly technical material
  • advertising
  • in general anything else not of interest to a literary audience
• digitized movies (unless they contain interactive elements)
• recorded songs
• work that contains no written or spoken text
• excerpts from longer works, unless the excerpts are self-contained (such as a complete poem from a collection)

Qualifying electronic elements:

• audio or video (this may consist of the text being read or performed)
• animation
• prominent graphical or visual elements that play a vital role in the work
• hypertext or other interactive elements
• reader collaboration (any reader is allowed to contribute new text to the work, which then becomes a permanent part of the work)
• text generation (rules and random processes determine how words are combined during a reading)

Elements that don't qualify a work for inclusion:

• standard e-book features:
  • hypertext index or table of contents
  • links to footnotes
  • full-text search capability
  • electronic bookmarks
• minimal use of graphics (such as ornamental fonts for titles)
• nonvariable text produced by a text-generating program if the text-generating code is not part of the work itself
• text that incorporates the symbols or syntax of computer code, the jargon of chat room discussion, or other types of textual content associated with computers

 
Submitting a Request for an Account

If you have determined that your work meets the inclusion criteria above, send an e-mail to directory@eliterature.org containing all the following information:

For authors:

1. Specify that you are applying for an account as an author.
2. Include your name as you wish it to appear in your listings.
3. Include the e-mail address (and home page URL, if available) that should be included in your author record. If you don't wish your e-mail address to be made public, please tell us and it will not be listed in the ELD.
4. Provide the URLs of one or more of your qualifying works (or descriptions and ordering information for work published on disk). If possible, please send URLs or information for several works, especially if you're uncertain about which ones may qualify for inclusion.
5. For each submitted work, specify its genre and the electronic elements it contains.

 For publishers:

1. Specify that you are applying for an account as a publisher.
2. Include your name and the name of your publishing company, periodical, or Web site as you wish it to appear in your listings.
3. Include the contact e-mail address that should be included in your publisher record. We will use this address to correspond with you.
4. Include the URLs of one or more of your qualifying publications (or descriptions and ordering information for work published on disk). If possible, please send URLs or information for several works, especially if you're uncertain about which ones may qualify for inclusion.
5. For each submitted work, specify its genre and the electronic elements it contains.

What You Will Receive

Once we confirm that your work meets our inclusion criteria, we will create an author listing for you in the ELD and enter one or two of your works, based on the information you submitted. You will then receive an automatically generated e-mail message containing a username, a password, and log-in instructions that will let you update and add to your listings whenever appropriate. If your work is unsuitable for the Directory we will notify you of this.