Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 4 Chapter 1: Introduction

"This fourth volume of Rebooting Electronic Literature (REL) continues with the Electronic Literature Lab's mission to document born-digital literary works published on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other media formats held among the 300 in Dene Grigar's personal collection in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. Since the first volume was published in 2019, this annual publication has provided in-depth information that includes images of the physical media, videos of performances by and interviews with the authors, and scholarly essays for 17 hypertext literary works no longer accessible to the public. This current volume brings that number to 25 titles published between 1988 to 2004. For the most part, these are early hypertext and interactive works created with stand-alone software, like Storyspace, Hypergate, HyperCard, Toolbook, and Macromedia Director, and published before floppy disk and CD-ROM drives disappeared from computers and the rise of mobile media and mainstreaming of cloud technology eliminated the need for physical media formats." -- from Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4, Introduction