eCompanions
In 2002, as part of an effort to promote the understanding of oral traditions as multimedia events, the CSOT launched the first eCompanion, created to accompany John Miles Foley’s How to Read an Oral Poem. This facility contains audio, video, photographic, and text-based support for that volume, and advocates using the media in an integrated fashion – with the book in one hand and a mouse in the other.
Two years later the CSOT extended the concept of eCompanions to the articles that constitute its journal Oral Tradition. As with the first such facility, eCompanions for OT presented resources that could not fit comfortably, or at all, between the covers of a printed text. Again the model consisted of adding electronic to textual media.
With the migration of OT to the web, we have attached eCompanions to individual articles, so that the entire experience of each contribution – the pdf file and online multimedia – is available in composite, integrated form. Examples include audio and photographs accompanying a study of Gaelic song, video and photographs to illustrate Javanese dance, supplementary images associated with Kabuki drama, and audio of an Appalachian folktale performance.
Oral Tradition continues to augment as many contributions as possible by providing eCompanions that help bring oral traditions to life. The Table of Contents identifies these articles with the following icon.