
My current research explores the digital curation of electronic literature (e-lit) in and outside of cultural heritage institutions. These works depend on complex arrangements of hardware and software that can quickly become obsolete. Readers and writers also adopt and adapt cultural practices for engaging with e-lit texts that extend beyond particular technical dependencies. All of this requires new approaches to long-term care of this vital body of cultural heritage.
I'm interested in the development of digital curation practices and tools for cultural heritage professionals working with e-lit works and archival collections in libraries, archives, and museums -- but I strongly believe that these practices and tools need to develop in and through communities of writers and readers of e-lit. My research focuses on the intersection between creative communities and cultural heritage institutions, imaging new ways for readers and writers to have a stake in the long-term preservation of e-lit. This research continues work that began with my dissertation, which you can find here.
You can visit my author page in the NC DOCKSS Institutional Repository, here, which includes many of my published papers.
For more, visit my blog, where I post informal writings that constitute this ongoing research. Below is a list of my publications, talks, presentations, and other artifacts of my research.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Post, Colin and Kassidy Hof-Mahoney. 2022. "The Pandemic at Home: Learning from Community-engaged Covid-19 Documentation Efforts in the Southeastern US." Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists 38 (2): 4-21. (winner of the David B. Gracy, II Award!)
- Post, Colin. 2021. "The Art of Digital Curation: Co-Operative Stewardship of Net-Based Art." Archivaria 92: 6-47.
- Post, Colin, and Alexandra Chassanoff. 2021. "Beyond the Workflow: Archivists' Aspirations for Digital Curation Practices." Archival Science 21 (4): 413-32.
- Post, Colin. 2021. "On the Platform's Ruins: Toward a Poetics of Obsolescence." In Proceedings of the 2021 Electronic Literature Organization Conference. ELO '21.
- Post, Colin, Alexandra Chassanoff, Christopher A. Lee, Andrew Rabkin, Yinglong Zhang, Katherine Skinner, and Sam Meister. 2019. "Digital Curation at Work: Modeling Workflows for Digital Archival Materials." In Proceedings of the 19th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 39-48. JCDL '19. Urbana-Champaign, IL: IEEE Computer Society Press. doi:10.1109/JCDL.2019.00016. (nominated for best paper!)
- Post, Colin, Patrick Golden, and Ryan Shaw. 2018. "Never the Same Stream: netomat, XLink, and Metaphors of Web Documents." In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2018, 13:1-13:10. DocEng '18. Halifax, Nova Scotia: ACM. doi:10.1145/3209280.3209530. (nominated for best paper!)
- Post, Colin. 2017. "Preservation Practices of New Media Artists: Challenges, Strategies, and Attitudes in the Personal Management of Artworks." Journal of Documentation 73 (4): 716-732. doi:10.1108/JD-09-2016-0116.
- Post, Colin. 2017. "Building a Living, Breathing Archive: A Review of Appraisal Theories and Approaches for Web Archives." Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture 46 (2). doi:10.1515/pdtc-2016-0031.
- Post, Colin. 2017. "Ensuring the Legacy of Self-Taught and Local Artists: A Collaborative Framework for Preserving Artists' Archives." Art Documentation 36 (1): 73-90. doi:10.1086/691373.
Other Publications
- Chassanoff, Alexandra, and Colin Post. 2020. "OSSArcFlow Guide to Documenting Born-Digital Archival Workflows." Edited by Katherine Skinner, Jessica Farrell, Brandon Locke, Caitlin Perry, Kari Smith, and Hannah Wang. Educopia Institute. https://educopia.org/ossarcflow-guide/.
- Post, Colin. 2018. "Supporting Artists' Personal Archives." In The Complete Guide to Personal Digital Archiving, edited by Brianna H. Marshall, 157-168. Chicago: ALA Editions.
- Post, Colin. 2017. "The Ever-Shifting Landscape: Mapping the Present and Future of Digital Art Histories." In The Handbook of Art and Design Librarianship, edited by Judy Dyki and Paul Glassman, Second edition, 213-24. London: Facet Publishing.
- Post, Colin. 2017. "The Unending Lives of Net-Based Artworks: Web Archives, Browser Emulators, and New Conceptual Frameworks." In Researchers, Practitioners and Their Use of the Archived Web. London. doi:10.14296/resaw.0005.
Posters and Presentations
- "Seeing, Hearing, and Touching Records: An Experiment in Creative Archives Pedagogy." Presentation during the Archival/Preservation Education SIG Session at the Association for Library and Information Science Education Conference, October 24-26, 2022, Pittsburgh, PA.
- "My (Mostly) Frustrated Efforts to Collect Narrative Games in an Academic Library." Presentation at the NarraScope Conference, July 30-31, 2022.
- "Learning from Experience: Lessons from a Virtual Service-Learning Experiment." Presentation during the Archival/Preservation Education SIG Session at the Association for Library and Information Science Education Conference, September 20-24, 2021.
- "Provincial Pandemic: Comparing Across Community-engaged Covid-19 Collecting Efforts." Presentation at the Society of North Carolina Archivists Annual Meeting, April 15, 2021. (authored with Kassidy Hof-Mahoney)
- "Artists as Archivists: Digital Curation in Creative Practice." Presentation at the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, Summer 2020.
- "The First Stewards: Digital Preservation in Artist-run Platforms and Galleries." Presentation at the American Institute for Conservation Annual Meeting, Summer 2020.
- "Dark Arts: Artists' Information Practices in the Care of Digital Artworks and Archives." Poster presentation at the Association for Library and Information Science Education Conference, September 24-26, 2019, Knoxville, TN. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105294
- "Defining the Field: What is at Stake in the Care of Artist Archives?" Presentation and panel discussion at The Rapidly Changing Landscape of Archive Stewardship in Contemporary Art Symposium, Hauser & Wirth Institute, March 22, 2019, New York, NY.
- "OSSArcFlow: What Differences Make a Difference in Digital Curation Workflows?" Poster presentation at iPRES, September 24 - 27, 2018, Boston, MA. https://osf.io/9dsw3/ (authored with Andrew Rabkin, Christopher Lee, Yinglong Zhang, Jessica Meyerson, Alexandra Chassanoff, Katherine Skinner, and Sam Meister)
- "Stalking, Shredding, and Streaming: Reading E-Lit Through Artists' Alternative Browsers." Presentation at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival, August 13 - 17, 2018, Montréal, Canada.
- "Artists' Studio Archives." Workshop at the National Forum on Ethics & Archiving the Web, March 22 - 24, 2018, New York, NY.
- "Archiving Workshops for Artists: Lessons from the Artists' Studio Archives Project." Presentation at the Art Libraries Society of North America 46th Annual Conference, February 25 - March 1, 2018, New York, NY.
- "Preservation Practices of New Media Artists." Webinar presentation at the Digital Preservation Coalition, February 8, 2017, York, UK. http://dpconline.org/events/past-events/preserving-new-media-webinar
- "Meet the Artist: Cornelio Campos." Conversation between Colin Post and Cornelio Campos as part of the Durham County Library's Humanities Program series, October 30, 2016, Durham, NC. https://youtu.be/77S1G6JvIEU
- "Creativity Around the Corner: Artists' Archives at the Durham County Library." Poster presentation at Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, July 31 - August 6, 2016, Atlanta, GA.
- "Designing and Delivering a Digital Archiving Workshop for Studio Artists." Personal Digital Archiving Conference, May 12-14, 2016, Ann Arbor, MI.
- "Voices From Every Angle: An Experiment in Documenting Contemporary Art." Society of American Archivists Research Forum, August 18, 2015, Cleveland, OH.
- "The Collapse of Romanticism in The Octopus." Western Literature Association Conference, October 5-8, 2011, Missoula, MT.
- "The Production of Space in The Crux," Charlotte Perkins Gilman Conference, June 17-19, 2011, Missoula, MT.