TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION and CROWDSOURCED DIGITAL PUBLISHING by Amelia Chesley

CONVENTIONS OF THE COMMONS: TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION AND CROWDSOURCED DIGITAL PUBLISHING by Amelia Chesley

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English West Lafayette, Indiana August 2018

THE PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE APPROVAL

Dr. Patricia Sullivan, Chair Department of English Dr. Jenny Bay Department of English Dr. Michael Salvo Department of English Dr. Richard Johnson-Sheehan Department of English

Approved by: Dr. S. Dorsey Armstrong Head of the Graduate Program

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for me

for all my admirable, book-loving family—parents, sisters, nieces, nephews, brothers— and for husband Jeremiah and Wesley the pug, who both help keep me from working too hard

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to a great many wonderful people who have made this finished project possible and helped me to become Dr. Amelia Chesley. Most importantly, I must give thanks and acknowledgement to all the mentors, teachers, and family members who have encouraged the scholarly parts of myself to keep inquiring and pursuing knowledge as far as I possibly could, throughout my entire life. To my committee members Jenny Bay, Michael Salvo, and Rick

Johnson-Sheehan, and especially to Pat Sullivan, my dissertation director, I am especially and endlessly grateful. I will greatly miss having regular opportunities for thoughtful, challenging conversations in each of your offices. Pat, I hope I can be half the scholar and thinker you are.

Your example has been a tremendous source of hope and strength during my time as your student and advisee.

Thanks and praise also go to all other faculty and staff who have taught, mentored, and befriended me at Purdue: Thomas Rickert, Margie Berns, Tammy Conard Salvo, Bud Weiser,

Samantha Blackmon, Nathan Mentzer, Linda Haynes, Nush Powell, Joy Kane, and Jill Quirk.

My graduate school journey would not have taken the fortuitous turns it did without the inimitable and brilliant scholar, professor, and mentor Kelli Cargile Cook. For everything you have been for me, Kelli, I can never thank you enough. I only hope to be able to pay it forward to the students and scholars who come after me. I also owe thanks to many professors and mentors who have taught and guided me thus far: Rylish Moeller, Keith Grant-Davie, and Cheryl Ball from my time at Utah State University; Amanda Booher, Ann Hawkins, Jennifer Snead, Miles Kimball, and

Rich Rice from my time at Texas Tech University; and Judith Keeling and Joanna Conrad from

Texas Tech University Press. To anyone who ever wrote recommendation letters for me along the way, a thousand thanks for your time and for your confidence. v

My fellow soon-to-be Purdue alumni deserve praise and gratitude as well. To those in my cohort and beyond with whom I’ve worked or played or baked pies: Erin Twal, Carrie Kancilia,

Jeff Gerding, Sam Dunn, Trinity Overmyer, Tony Bushner, Sherri Craig, Erin Brock Carlson, and

Beth Towle, thank you for being there and doing excellent, interesting work. I’m also so lucky to have the examples of Patti Poblete, Chalice Randazzo, Tim Elliott, Kristen Moore, and all the hard-working and inspirational members of the Women in Tech Comm community. Thank you for being excellent humans.

At the risk of taking up far too much space in this section, I must mention as many

LibriVoxers as I can here, in recognition of their generous work and patience with me as I joined, participated, and researched the project we are a part of. Specific and everlasting thanks to all of the following fellow volunteers: to Lynnet, for first approving my 1-minute test recording, for helping me get started as reader and prooflistener, and for meta coordinating my first solo project; to Carolin, for welcoming me into several poetry projects; to annise for allowing me to edit the

LibriVox wiki; to craigdav1 who prooflistened my first solo; to MaryAnnSpiegel, for inviting me to coordinate my first collaborative project and for meta-coordinating my second solo; to bluechien, for recording one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard; to jimmowatt, ductapeguy, Cori, RuthieG, and bobgon55 for their impressive and invaluable work on the

LibriVox Community Podcast; to commonsparrow3 for her help with LibriVox anniversary projects; to mb, TriciaG, WoollyBee, peppersnoodles93, and BettyB for contributing their memories to my Chapter 3 research; to JorWat for so patiently and thoroughly prooflistening my current in-progress solo; to kayray, PeterWhy, mightyfelix, Basquetteur, Availle, lezer, Piotrek81, alg101, DACSoft, kathrinee, and DrPGould for encouraging my work on this dissertation; and not least of all, to Hugh McGuire for starting the whole project and for being cool on twitter. I’m sure vi there are many other LibriVoxers to whom I owe thanks, whose names and contributions I may have overlooked when composing these acknowledgements. I will always be in awe of the big and small ways LibriVoxers make the world a better place. Without all of their efforts to make the processes and content of their work public, accessible, and inviting, I would not have had the kind of access I’ve needed to do the work of this dissertation.

Lastly, I thank my dearest loved ones, near and far. Jeremiah, you have been exceedingly patient and supportive of this work and of me for the last two years. I love you and can’t wait to see where the future takes us. Mom and Dad, I hope to always hold on to the many great things you’ve taught me through your steadfast examples and through conversations with me and the rest of the family. Dad, thank you for taking time to attend my dissertation defense; it was grand to spend time with you and have you there for that unique and momentous event. Mom, thank you for offering to proofread the first, imperfect complete draft of these five chapters. I hope you don’t find any grievous mistakes in this final version. To Christopher James Jordan—I owe you at least twenty gallons of the best ice cream, and even that would not be enough to truly express my gratitude for your listening ear and constant, unfailing friendship. To all my younger siblings and nieces and nephews, it is a privilege to be related to you all. May we all keep reading and learning as much as we possibly can.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ...... x LIST OF FIGURES ...... xi ABSTRACT ...... xiv CHAPTER 1: THE ABUNDANCES AND IDIOSYNCRASIES OF LIBRIVOX AND DIGITAL RESEARCH ...... 1 Defining LibriVox ...... 8 Amateur Experts and Distributed, Crowdsourced Work ...... 11 Practicing Archives and Communities of Documentation ...... 13 Ethnographic Method Assemblages ...... 15 Origins, Evolutions, and Implications ...... 19 CHAPTER 2: LIBRIVOX HISTORIES, THE DREAM OF UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE, AND THE STAKES FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION ...... 21 Scattered Digital Artifacts as Meshworks ...... 22 On the Dream of Universally Accessible Knowledge ...... 27 On Social Production + Crowdsourcing ...... 31 The Public Domain and the Commons as Cornucopia ...... 36 Sharing, Offering, and Invitational Instruction ...... 42 A Snapshot of 2005 Technical Communication Scholarship ...... 44 The Material Limits of Dreams ...... 49 CHAPTER 3: EVOLUTIONS OF PROCESS, MANAGEMENT, AND INFRASTRUCTURE AT LIBRIVOX ...... 53 Assembling and Reassembling Individual Motives ...... 58 Incarnations of Anne of Green Gables at LibriVox ...... 60 Highlighting Paths and Points of Evolution ...... 67 2005–2006: Scattered Seeds of Digital Infrastructure ...... 69 2006–2008: Negotiating and Enacting LibriVox Policies ...... 74 2010–2011: Adapting Anne of Green Gables ...... 78 2013: A Time-Traveling Anne and the Impact of Major Catalog Upgrades ...... 80 Redefining Workflows, Redefining Community ...... 84 viii

CHAPTER 4: INVITATIONAL TE