Capturing Creativity Week 2024: Event 1: Collecting Emerging Formats at the British Library

Presentation given as part of Capturing Creativity Week 2024. Event 1: The event was postponed from September 2024 and took place on 16 January 2025.

Presentation by Giulia Carla Rossi of the British Library.

Presenter biography: Giulia is Curator for Digital Publications at the British Library. Her work focuses on collecting and curating born-digital publications, including web-based interactive narratives and mobile apps. Her research interests include interactive storytelling, net art and creative coding. She was one of the curators of the British Library’s 2023 Digital Storytelling exhibition and contributed a chapter on interactive narratives as part of the history of the book form for 'The Book By Design' (2023).  

Presentation synopsis: Since 2013, the UK legal deposit libraries have worked collaboratively to develop content management systems to support born-digital complex publications. These publications, also called emerging formats, present challenges that are tied to their structural and technical complexity, their hardware and software dependencies and their often experimental nature. Building on the work carried out at the libraries and on the British Library's 2023 Digital Storytelling exhibition, this presentation will explore the many challenges related to collecting complex digital publications, focussing in particular on online interactive narratives and mobile apps. It will also investigate the possibilities offered by creating and archiving contextual information - such as author's websites, interviews, playthrough videos and other types of documentation - and how this material can add research value to a collection.

This item contains the recording of the presentation.