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Abstract

This article explores textual curation as a conceptualization of authorship and composition within large information structures that is heavily based on the canon of arrangement. This work is often undertaken through distributed collaboration, thus complicating traditional conceptions of authorial attribution and agency. Central curatorial processes include critical recomposition of prior texts along with the development of small and often invisible textual elements such as architecture, metadata, and strategic links. I offer a grounded definition of textual curation that draws from traditional curatorial fields such as Museum Studies and Library Science as well as Writing Studies’ own subfield of Technical Communication, which focuses heavily on recomposed, collaboratively produced texts. Selected Wikipedia articles serve as case studies for examining live curatorial work in open, collaborative environments.

3. Conclusion

Textual curation of complex information ecologies is no longer the future; it is simply what writing looks like now, particularly in large, open, digital reference texts. In order to prepare students for successful careers, we must continue to move toward including what Lunsford (2005) called “all the resources of a full range of media” in digital writing classrooms by finding ways to look beyond standard single-authored or small-group unit assignments that focus on essayistic digital products (p. 171). As she memorably said in her Computers and Writing keynote: In this scene of secondary orality and secondary literacy, student writers must be able to think critically and carefully about how to deliver the knowledge they produce. . .It is as though our old reliable rhetorical triangle of writer, reader, and message is transforming itself before our eyes, moving from three discrete angles to a shimmering, humming, dynamic set of performative relationships. (2006, p. 170) These performative relationships are centered in the curated product itself, in the functions that aspects of complex informative texts should perform and help users perform. The small and often invisible texts that make the world, and websites, run are essential elements of this kind of writing that help us realize the fullest potential of digital environments. These varied aspects of functional digital composition and compositional labor help us better account for the full range of skill and labor in new media writing in our classrooms, in our research, and at our own desks. Textual curation is no longer the sole provenance of digital humanities scholars, information science experts, or digital rhetoricians. It is an essential skill set for writing teachers, writing students, and anyone who plans to work in a world that runs on digital texts.