title: Beyond the  Client-Server Model: Self-contained to Portable Digital Libraries

authors: Bainbridge, David

subjects: computer science

abstract: We have created an experimental prototype that enhances an ordinary personal media player by adding digital library capabilities. It does not enable access to a remote digital library from a user’s PDA; rather, it runs a complete, standard digital library server environment on the device. Being optimized for multimedia information, this platform has truly vast storage capacity. It raises the possibility of not just personal collections but entire institutional-scale digital libraries that are fully portable. Our implementation even allows the device to be configured as a web server to provide digital library content over a network, inverting the standard mobile client-server configuration and incidentally providing full-screen access. Anecdotal yet compelling evidence as to the usefulness of being able to access a self-sufficient digital library anytime, anywhere is given through an example built from the PDF files of the Joint ACM/IEEE digital library conference. Other examples include the Complete Works of Shakespeare and collections on Humanitarian Aid. This paper describes the facilities we built, focusing on interface issues that were encountered and solved.

text: Beyond the  Client-Server Model: Self-contained to Portable Digital Libraries We have created an experimental prototype that enhances an ordinary personal media player by adding digital library capabilities. It does not enable access to a remote digital library from a user’s PDA; rather, it runs a complete, standard digital library server environment on the device. Being optimized for multimedia information, this platform has truly vast storage capacity. It raises the possibility of not just personal collections but entire institutional-scale digital libraries that are fully portable. Our implementation even allows the device to be configured as a web server to provide digital library content over a network, inverting the standard mobile client-server configuration and incidentally providing full-screen access. Anecdotal yet compelling evidence as to the usefulness of being able to access a self-sufficient digital library anytime, anywhere is given through an example built from the PDF files of the Joint ACM/IEEE digital library conference. Other examples include the Complete Works of Shakespeare and collections on Humanitarian Aid. This paper describes the facilities we built, focusing on interface issues that were encountered and solved.

year: 2008

title: The Darwin Continuum: The Influence of Charles Darwin on Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction

authors: Nelson, Emma Ashley-Rose

subjects: Charles Darwin

abstract: Abstract

In 1859 Charles Darwin challenged the Victorian worldview with his first controversial publication, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The Victorian understanding of species-relatedness had primarily rested on the biblical idea of species-specific design by God, in which animals are considered wholly separate, and unrelated to, the human species. The Origin outlines the conflicting theory of evolution by natural selection, whereby animal species descend from one another over time, in response to factors such as climate, resource availability, and competition. Darwin thus suggests the mutability and connectivity of species. The Origin does not explicitly address human evolution. It does, however, imply that humanity is not exempt from possessing animal ancestry. The apparent need for empathy, respect and equality across all species is emphasised. Human evolution was given greater attention in Darwin’s second work, The Descent of Man and, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).		
Herbert Spencer regarded natural selection as the ‘survival of the fittest’, a term which Darwin adopted in his fifth edition of The Origin in 1869. Described within The Origin as the survival of those better adapted for an immediate local environment, Darwin did not intend for the idea to transcend biology. Spencer, however, believed that survival of the fittest could be applied to sociology, and thus, as Social Darwinism, it became connected to ideas of racial superiority, eugenics, and justified genocide. 							
This thesis aims to analyse the nature of Darwin’s influence on novelists from the nineteenth century to present day. Of particular focus is how his ideas are represented and, on occasion, altered in the work of creative writers. The first half of this thesis focuses on late nineteenth-century authors writing in the immediate wake of The Origin. These novelists were inevitably influenced by Darwin’s ideas. Their fiction reflects both the Victorian fascination with Darwin, and the cultural, social, and theological unease that his theories stirred. Chapter One examines H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and War of the Worlds (1898), highlighting Wells’ intimate knowledge of Darwin’s theories, but also Wells’ anxieties about devolution and extinction. In Chapter Two attention turns to five late nineteenth and early twentieth-century novelists writing scientific romances and gothic fiction. Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (1863), Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) all exhibit respect for Darwin as a scientist, whilst also echoing Wells’ anxieties for the possible degeneration and regression of humanity. 								Having established these nineteenth-century contexts, I then move forward more than a century to explore neo-Victorian re-imaginings of Darwin and his ideas. Chapter Three focuses on The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles; Morpho Eugenia (1992) by A.S. Byatt; This Thing of Darkness (2005) by Harry Thompson; The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton (2005); and The Naturalist (2014) by Thom Conroy. These works showcase contemporary acceptance of many of Darwin’s views. Repulsion towards the way in which Darwin’s theories were applied in relation to issues of race creates a tension in these works, with Darwin perpetually mediated through a late twentieth and early twenty-first century lens. A similar self-reflexivity is evident in the Steampunk authors discussed in Chapter Four. In K.W. Jeter's Morlock Night (1979), Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy (2009-2011), and Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (2010), however, the seriousness of the neo-Victorians gives way to a playful spirit of fun.

text: The Darwin Continuum: The Influence of Charles Darwin on Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction Abstract

In 1859 Charles Darwin challenged the Victorian worldview with his first controversial publication, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The Victorian understanding of species-relatedness had primarily rested on the biblical idea of species-specific design by God, in which animals are considered wholly separate, and unrelated to, the human species. The Origin outlines the conflicting theory of evolution by natural selection, whereby animal species descend from one another over time, in response to factors such as climate, resource availability, and competition. Darwin thus suggests the mutability and connectivity of species. The Origin does not explicitly address human evolution. It does, however, imply that humanity is not exempt from possessing animal ancestry. The apparent need for empathy, respect and equality across all species is emphasised. Human evolution was given greater attention in Darwin’s second work, The Descent of Man and, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).		
Herbert Spencer regarded natural selection as the ‘survival of the fittest’, a term which Darwin adopted in his fifth edition of The Origin in 1869. Described within The Origin as the survival of those better adapted for an immediate local environment, Darwin did not intend for the idea to transcend biology. Spencer, however, believed that survival of the fittest could be applied to sociology, and thus, as Social Darwinism, it became connected to ideas of racial superiority, eugenics, and justified genocide. 							
This thesis aims to analyse the nature of Darwin’s influence on novelists from the nineteenth century to present day. Of particular focus is how his ideas are represented and, on occasion, altered in the work of creative writers. The first half of this thesis focuses on late nineteenth-century authors writing in the immediate wake of The Origin. These novelists were inevitably influenced by Darwin’s ideas. Their fiction reflects both the Victorian fascination with Darwin, and the cultural, social, and theological unease that his theories stirred. Chapter One examines H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and War of the Worlds (1898), highlighting Wells’ intimate knowledge of Darwin’s theories, but also Wells’ anxieties about devolution and extinction. In Chapter Two attention turns to five late nineteenth and early twentieth-century novelists writing scientific romances and gothic fiction. Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (1863), Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) all exhibit respect for Darwin as a scientist, whilst also echoing Wells’ anxieties for the possible degeneration and regression of humanity. 								Having established these nineteenth-century contexts, I then move forward more than a century to explore neo-Victorian re-imaginings of Darwin and his ideas. Chapter Three focuses on The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles; Morpho Eugenia (1992) by A.S. Byatt; This Thing of Darkness (2005) by Harry Thompson; The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton (2005); and The Naturalist (2014) by Thom Conroy. These works showcase contemporary acceptance of many of Darwin’s views. Repulsion towards the way in which Darwin’s theories were applied in relation to issues of race creates a tension in these works, with Darwin perpetually mediated through a late twentieth and early twenty-first century lens. A similar self-reflexivity is evident in the Steampunk authors discussed in Chapter Four. In K.W. Jeter's Morlock Night (1979), Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy (2009-2011), and Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (2010), however, the seriousness of the neo-Victorians gives way to a playful spirit of fun.

year: 2015

title: Poetic lives: Verse biography in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Anderson-O'Connor, Aimee-Jane

subjects: Verse

abstract: Bringing together a selection of Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographies, and drawing on perspectives deriving from decolonizing methodologies, and from historical and feminist revision and reclamation, as well as my own experience as a creative practitioner, this thesis explores verse biography in Aotearoa New Zealand, with special reference to common thematic and personal preoccupations, and the settings in which these play out.  I am led in this research by a few key questions. What techniques are available to the verse biographer, and what opportunities for innovation and intervention do these techniques afford? What limitations remain? What key settings shape and are shaped by the lives of those who live here? What can we learn by exploring the relationship between the individual life story and the cultural stories which take shape in what Philip Fisher has called the ‘privileged settings’ of any national literature? I focus in particular on a selection of longer verse biographies: Allen Curnow’s ‘An Abominable Temper’ (1973), Ian Wedde’s ‘A Ballad for Worser Heberley’ (1993), Robert Sullivan’s Captain Cook in the Underworld (2002), Airini Beautrais’s Dear Neil Roberts (2014), Chris Tse’s How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014), Gregory Kan’s This Paper Boat (2016), Karen Zelas’s The Trials of Minnie Dean: A Verse Biography (2017), and Nina Powles’s collection of chapbooks collectively titled Luminescent (2017). I have chosen longer works because of the scope they offer to trace the broader sense of the life story and pick up on imagery and voices which repeat and echo within the texts. I am also interested in the way that Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographers often extend their subject’s life story beyond the barrier of death and imagine their subjects’ afterlives in sensory poetic terms. While this selection is diverse, and showcases a wide range of subject matter, poetic approach and voices, each of these verse biographies dramatizes the subject position of the poet, and partakes in a poetics of intersectional revision and reclamation. 
 My exegesis identifies and explores the fundamental role of setting in the canon and analyses the energizing concerns that verse biographers unpack in these settings. I am interested in the ways that Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographers maintain attention to key local settings throughout their works, and critically engage with the cultural stories which persist in and around them. I am especially interested in the way these poetic explorations afford space for decolonial and feminist approaches. Four major settings appear often. The beach is a space of encounter in which ongoing processes of colonisation and crossing unfold. The home is marked by instability and hidden harm, in which domestic disorder is unearthed. The police station is exposed as a space of class and gender power imbalance which informs law making and enforcement. The beyond constitutes a liminal space of exchange and unrest, as the poets grapple with cultural exchange and complexities of life and death.
The final portion of my thesis takes the form of a creative practice component. It consists of a verse biography titled Keepsake, centred on the lives of my paternal grandparents, Kevin Buxton O’Connor and Mary Helen O’Connor (née Fryer). It engages explicitly with the issues raised in the analytical component of my thesis. Keepsake is a collection shaped indelibly by the sudden death of my grandmother midway through my thesis, and my experience of weathering the seasons of grief with my grandfather, and our shared attempts to find the words to hold tight to her life. Like many of the other verse biographies in Aotearoa New Zealand, it operates as a poetic and historiographic record of my research process and the time in which the thesis was written. It has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the ways in which verse biography allows for a simultaneous autobiographical exploration, examining the role of the verse biographer as researcher and intermediary between the past and the present. The process has especially strengthened my appreciation for verse biography as a form which takes us into the beyond and affords a space where we might speak to the dead and hold space for an answer, where we might make a home of language, ripe for haunting.

text: Poetic lives: Verse biography in Aotearoa New Zealand Bringing together a selection of Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographies, and drawing on perspectives deriving from decolonizing methodologies, and from historical and feminist revision and reclamation, as well as my own experience as a creative practitioner, this thesis explores verse biography in Aotearoa New Zealand, with special reference to common thematic and personal preoccupations, and the settings in which these play out.  I am led in this research by a few key questions. What techniques are available to the verse biographer, and what opportunities for innovation and intervention do these techniques afford? What limitations remain? What key settings shape and are shaped by the lives of those who live here? What can we learn by exploring the relationship between the individual life story and the cultural stories which take shape in what Philip Fisher has called the ‘privileged settings’ of any national literature? I focus in particular on a selection of longer verse biographies: Allen Curnow’s ‘An Abominable Temper’ (1973), Ian Wedde’s ‘A Ballad for Worser Heberley’ (1993), Robert Sullivan’s Captain Cook in the Underworld (2002), Airini Beautrais’s Dear Neil Roberts (2014), Chris Tse’s How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014), Gregory Kan’s This Paper Boat (2016), Karen Zelas’s The Trials of Minnie Dean: A Verse Biography (2017), and Nina Powles’s collection of chapbooks collectively titled Luminescent (2017). I have chosen longer works because of the scope they offer to trace the broader sense of the life story and pick up on imagery and voices which repeat and echo within the texts. I am also interested in the way that Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographers often extend their subject’s life story beyond the barrier of death and imagine their subjects’ afterlives in sensory poetic terms. While this selection is diverse, and showcases a wide range of subject matter, poetic approach and voices, each of these verse biographies dramatizes the subject position of the poet, and partakes in a poetics of intersectional revision and reclamation. 
 My exegesis identifies and explores the fundamental role of setting in the canon and analyses the energizing concerns that verse biographers unpack in these settings. I am interested in the ways that Aotearoa New Zealand verse biographers maintain attention to key local settings throughout their works, and critically engage with the cultural stories which persist in and around them. I am especially interested in the way these poetic explorations afford space for decolonial and feminist approaches. Four major settings appear often. The beach is a space of encounter in which ongoing processes of colonisation and crossing unfold. The home is marked by instability and hidden harm, in which domestic disorder is unearthed. The police station is exposed as a space of class and gender power imbalance which informs law making and enforcement. The beyond constitutes a liminal space of exchange and unrest, as the poets grapple with cultural exchange and complexities of life and death.
The final portion of my thesis takes the form of a creative practice component. It consists of a verse biography titled Keepsake, centred on the lives of my paternal grandparents, Kevin Buxton O’Connor and Mary Helen O’Connor (née Fryer). It engages explicitly with the issues raised in the analytical component of my thesis. Keepsake is a collection shaped indelibly by the sudden death of my grandmother midway through my thesis, and my experience of weathering the seasons of grief with my grandfather, and our shared attempts to find the words to hold tight to her life. Like many of the other verse biographies in Aotearoa New Zealand, it operates as a poetic and historiographic record of my research process and the time in which the thesis was written. It has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the ways in which verse biography allows for a simultaneous autobiographical exploration, examining the role of the verse biographer as researcher and intermediary between the past and the present. The process has especially strengthened my appreciation for verse biography as a form which takes us into the beyond and affords a space where we might speak to the dead and hold space for an answer, where we might make a home of language, ripe for haunting.

year: 2022