{"id":2618,"date":"2026-03-03T12:14:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T20:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amplab.ok.ubc.ca\/?p=2618"},"modified":"2026-03-10T09:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:14:10","slug":"after-the-web-what-is-next-for-spokenweb-and-the-soundbox-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amplab.ok.ubc.ca\/index.php\/2026\/03\/03\/after-the-web-what-is-next-for-spokenweb-and-the-soundbox-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"AFTER THE WEB: What is next for\u00a0SpokenWeb\u00a0and the\u00a0SoundBox\u00a0Collection?\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After more than seven years of work\u2014conceptualization, digitization, metadata creation, not to mention myriad symposia and institutes, performances and listening practices (as well as the occasional Zoom, close-listening bingo match)\u2014 across a host of collaborating institutions, the searchable SpokenWeb front end is finally live!<\/strong> We at the AMP Lab would like to take a moment to celebrate, reflect, and imagine what comes next.  
 
As a way of beginning, the authors of this post \u2013 Karis Shearer and Cole Mash \u2014 sound the heartiest of congratulations to the long list of people that worked on the SpokenWeb project, including but not limited to our fearless leader Jason Camlot, the research leads at all the partner institutions, the governing board, collaborators, current and former students, as well as the numerous writers and voices captured on the tapes themselves: thank you<\/em>. The website\u2019s front end, which can be found here<\/a>, represents an astounding achievement for literary sound studies, and one of the most comprehensive collections of archival literary audio in the world.  
 
While the first phase of the SpokenWeb project is now complete, we at the UBC Okanagan AMP Lab continue our own work with the literary audio we contributed to SpokenWeb: our transient little box(es) of tapes known as the SoundBox Collection. The SoundBox Collection (a presentations site which can be found here<\/a>) contains literary audio recordings representing British Columbian and Canadian literary and cultural heritage. Originally coming to me (PI Dr. Karis Shearer) as a box of reel-to-reel tapes, the collection grew to over 500 tapes thanks to donations from Canadian poets. Itwas digitized and described by the UBCO team in the AMP Lab as part of the SpokenWeb Project. The SoundBox Collection contains poetry readings, interviews, literary lectures, speeches, and recitations all collected and recorded from the 1960s to present on the West Coast of North America. The SoundBox website does not contain digital copies of every tape in the collection; instead, it acts as a digital edition situating, interpreting, and presenting the collection in a critical framework. In particular, the apparatus of the website aims to amplify IBPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, and women\u2019s voices so often silenced in similar literary histories and interrogates the gendered division of labour in the communities they represent.  
 
As we reflect on the work the SpokenWeb Partnership and the UBCO SpokenWeb team have completed, and each website has become available to potential users, an important question must be asked: what can we as students, researchers, teachers, or afficionados do with this these collections of literary audio? <\/em> 
 
I (Shearer) approached this very question a few years ago in a blog post for the AMP Lab website entitled, \u201cCopy, copy, copy! Community-building through reproduction and circulation,\u201d which can be found here<\/a>.  In February 2021, I wrote:  
 
\u201cToday I find myself excited about the network of copies SpokenWeb\u2019s SWALLOW audio metadata ingest system will allow us to trace (at least within university collections) and what it will allow us to say about community-building that took place in the 1960s and 70s through the copying and sharing of audio artefacts, and what was at stake in those activities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that post, I was imagining the future (the now): what might we learn about literary communities of production and reception through SpokenWeb when the searchable metadata becomes available?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Now, in 2026, we would like to suggest that, in addition to understanding historical literary communities of production and reception more fully, the benefits and uses of the SpokenWeb searchable metadata and the Soundbox Collection website are:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n