Institutional Embedding
The reasons for choosing Scalar for Pathfinders included the institutional or academic context of picking a platform that was developed by a university and maintains a certain status among born-digital platform in academia. When asked about how the status of Pathfinders compared to the physical book Traversals, Grigar explains that having a book published by a high-standard academic press "has always been the brass ring for academics". Pathfinders, however, has also gained weight, or "accordance", in the electronic literature and DH field, as Grigar points out: "we accord respect, we accord authority" but "it was not automatically blessed with it" the way that a book from MIT Press, Traversals' publisher, is. The fact that the research is funded by National Endowment for the Humanities has helped the academic validity. Grigar notes that the book has "been indexed by a whole bunch of different organizations" and it has gotten almost 50.000 hits since its publication eight years ago. This is an upward spiral as the many hits has also led to Pathfinders ranking higher in Google's algorithm. When searching for the four works of electronic literature discussed in the books, Pathfinders' results are among the first, especially in the image section.
Prior experience with various born-digital publications also influences readership. Reader participant Maud Ceuterick explains that "I would never imagine myself reading a full website or not even a full webpage, well, yes, it depends on if it is a literal story or a story that has a start and an end, then yes, I would read it." When prompted to talk about Pathfinders' academic value, Ceuterick states that "I don't think that the format, I mean, the platform changes its validity for me". Coming from film studies, she compares Pathfinders to video essays which are increasingly seen as more valuable in film studies, but "the thing is, I haven't really seen, not yet, people referencing video essays as much for their academic content". A possible explanation Ceuterick offers is that video essays rely more on audience interpretations, unlike the conventions of academic articles which require the author to guide the reader more directly. When asked to imagine citing Pathfinders, she contemplates the different ways citation might be possible, as the work arguably contains specific pages and authors to be cited. As such, the media specificity is linked to the institutional embedding. Van Vark also reflects that she is afraid other people might not take it as seriously as a physical academic book as "a website often feels less of an authority", but that she considers the source more valuable because it gives more information. For evaluating the academic status, she would look at the authors, the publisher or owner, as well as privacy measures and validation for the interactive elements of Scalar such as the comment function. In her reflection on how to cite Pathfinders, she does not think "website" would be an apt description as a source, but "I'm not sure what MLA says about this". Both reader participants' responses, then, indicate a tension between media experience and perceived institutional authority.
And institutional embedding is not simply an attribute of circulation and readership either, but rather integral to the production from a project's inception. Grigar explains that the four electronic literature authors featured in Pathfinders were chosen for a mixture of personal, academic, and funding reasons. For every author, there needed to be a compelling reason why this author in particular needed to be included in the project. The dedication at the beginning of the book, "For Anne Balsamo, whose belief in this work made it possible", also reflects this element, as Anne Balsamo was the person to visit Grigar's lab and urged her to write a grant proposal to do something with the lab. This strong institutional genesis is important to Grigar as "this is all about story, this is about lore". Rather than detached observers, the authors are engaged members of the academic community. Pathfinders makes explicit the various steps in which the research project is contingent on academic and institutional embedding.
Accessibility
Using a born-digital platform with multimodal elements brings about issues when it comes to accessibility. Physical books have issues of accessibility in terms of assumed dexterity and vision– as Richard H. Godden remarks "a book sitting on my shelf might as well be a continent away" (93) – but I will focus specifically on access in born-digital publications. The Scalar feature of creating paths can contribute to accessibility as paths can divide a wealth of multimedia sources into less-overwhelming separate pages. This is one of the advantages of creating the present article as a Scalar path rather than one webpage with many videos on it.When asked about accessibility features such as the lack of captions for the videos, Grigar readily agrees, explaining "we were planning to do transcripts, we just ran out of money". This is a familiar problem in academia, enhanced by Grigar's ethical rule that in her lab "nobody works for free". Di Cresce also questions the accessibility during her Traversal, but recognizes the labor involved in this as well. This is an issue within academic funding structures that should be addressed on a systemic funding level.
This lack of financial support affects both the accessibility for disabled people and the research itself. A transcript and captions of all the video content would make the videos more accessible to Deaf/HoH people, people for whom English is not their first language, as well as people who are new to the field and might not pick up on all the terminology and names in audio format. Additionally, transcripts would make citation more straightforward. In the case of Pathfinders it can be unclear during some of the Traversals whether the author/reader is reading out loud or giving their own comments. This alternation can be presented in transcripts. Especially for works that present significant parts of their sources in the form of video and audio fragments, other scholars and students get the opportunity to research the data from different perspectives, including researching the sources through discourse and linguistic analysis. As such, a transcript adds a layer of valuable information as well as ease. Accessibility should not be the sole task of individual research groups, but a sense of accountability shared with the platform and embedded media platforms to highlight accessibility features. The reason this responsibility can and must be shared has to do with the technological context.
