What is a bibliographical object in a distributed digital environment? What are the challenges in developing a bibliographical description of digital artifacts and how could these be addressed using post-colonial theories of knowledge production? When we try to apply traditional analytic or descriptive approaches to bibliography to digital artifacts, it quickly becomes clear that they are not “objects” in the analogue sense. Digital objects are constituted at the intersection of multiple dependencies—from file types and platforms to bandwidth, browser capabilities, and processing speeds to social and cultural conditions of production and reception. This talk draws on various models of bibliographical study and approaches to the history of the book to suggest some ways a general practice of digital bibliography might be developed.
(Source: ELD 2015)
