Building a Literature Network on a Global Scale
The “Taiwan Literature Web” has been built on the foundation of the Taiwan Literature projects completed by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. It focuses on “literary history” and provides Taiwan and foreign scholars and specialists and society at large with research material. It is an integrated web portal for sources of Taiwan literature and is comprised of eight major areas: Literary History, Audiovisual Room, Exhibition Hall, E-Book , Taiwan Literature in Translation, E-Learning, Internet Resources, and Database. With each area linked to the others, the material is presented in a systematic way and offers researchers the ability to quickly collect relevant data. For example, in the Literary History section there is a chronological table of Taiwan literature that spans time periods and includes that of the Dutch, Koxinga, Manchu control, Japanese colonialism and the National Government (1624-2010). Recording key people, events, and things, it can certainly be called a comprehensive “map” of Taiwan literary history. In addition to revealing important events in the various developmental periods of Taiwan literature, the chronology links key words to the Museum databases. For example, there is the Taiwan Writers/Works Catalogue, which contains more than 2,600 short biographies and over 100,000 items. Not only does this synthesize the significance and value of literary historical materials, it shows in a concrete way the results of modern Taiwan writers’ creativity and publishing over the last century. The recently completed Taiwan Modern and Contemporary Writers—Literary Criticism Catalogue contains critical material on 310 writers. This is an important reference work for any research on Taiwan writers. By searching with chronological table key words one can extend the depth and breadth of a query and find relevant books, periodicals, and author data, as well as data on works and critiques of these works.