HYPERTEXHYPERTEXTALETALEITY:ITY: DIGITAL CINDERELLA, DIGITAL CINDERELLA,

HYPERTEXT, and ORALITYHYPERTEXT, and ORALITY

Sharon L. Comstock, M.A., M.L.S., Ph.D. candidate

(scomstoc@uiuc.edu)Graduate School of Library and Information Science,

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

Once upon a time…Once upon a time…

Orality…Orality…

Written is only one representation of the orally told tale

Dynamic in natureAllows for reorganization of

motifs/elements based on the situated nature of the performance (audience)

Hypertextuality…Hypertextuality…

Multilinearity via nodes, links, “lexias”Plural digital texts make multiple variants

immediately accessibleMultimedia elements bring us to a

“secondary orality” (McLuhan; Ong)Reconfigures notion of “text” as staticE-text as “participatory mystique”

Examination of Examination of “The Cinderella Project”“The Cinderella Project”

http://www.usm.edu/english/fairytales/cinderella/cinderella.htmlhttp://www.usm.edu/english/fairytales/cinderella/cinderella.html Text and image archive containing a dozen

English versions of the fairy tale drawn from the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi

Can be read vertically or horizontally Divided into “episodes,” linked to an index page Links to the original digitized object

““Cinderella Project” as Cinderella Project” as Collaborative ModelCollaborative Model

Created by English faculty member Dr. Michael Salda based on a special collection

Example of “participatory design”Offers us as librarians and scholars a model

by which to develop online products that enhance access

Ultimately, access…Ultimately, access…

My hope is that the Cinderella tales that are buried in the darkest stacks of the library,

where “the unimportant, the unnoticed books, those one is supposed not to know,

not even to have seen” will finally be experienced again.

Quote excerpted from: Landow, George. (1992) Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

Resources and AcknowledgementsResources and Acknowledgements

Dundes, Alan. Cinderella: A Case Book, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1982. Landow, George P. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical

Theory and Technology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1992. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London:

Methuen, 1982. Opie, Iona and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales, New York: Oxford Univ.

Press, 1980.   Sierra, Judy. Cinderella, Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1992. Sobol, Joseph. “Innervison and Innertext,” in Who Says?, C. Birch, and M.

Heckler, eds. Little Rock: August House, 1996.

Thanks to Drs. Betsy Hearne (UIUC), Michael Salda (USM) and the librarians, web designer, and curator at the University of Southern

Mississippi deGrummond Collection.