Virtual Tribal Voices: Native American Literary Resources on the Web

Abstract

A s the Web increasingly becomes the tool of first choice for researchers, so too do analyses of web sites become pivotal in determining what online materials are currently available and how they can be used. In using web resources for conducting research, one must keep in mind how electronic sources differ from print ones. Researchers must understand the transitory quality of web sites: the information as well as graphic interface of a source may change for a variety of reasons such as author preference, timeliness of information, even administrative changes. Also, while the lack ofofficers on the information highway suggests a freedom from virtual hegemony through an anonymous leveling of power, the absence of any kind of peer review invites a kind of buyers beware approach to materials found on the Web. Keeping all of this in mind, I review two web sites significantly contributing to the online study of Native American literature. In narrowing the scope of this review to two sites, I am not suggesting that Native American literature is poorly represented on the Web. Indeed, there are many electronic sources on NA fiction, many of them commercial as well as noncommercial sites. The two sources I index here serve as fairly comprehensive, for the most part non-commercial sites for the study of Native American literary texts on the Web.