Pathfinders is a multimedia, open source Scalar book that documents the experience of early digital literature, specifically pre-web hypertext fiction and poetry, from 1986-1995. Written by Dene Grigar, associate professor and director of the Creative Media and Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver, and Stuart Moulthrop, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the book focuses on four specific works of born digital literature: Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger, John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, and Bill Bly’s We Descend. The book is ultimately an effort to extend access to literary works produced on platforms and software programs no longer available and threatened with obsolescence.

The method of documentation used in the book is unique: each author and two additional readers were videotaped interacting with a work on its original computer platform––a methodology they call “traversal.” “We see our work with documentation as a form of digital preservation,” the authors state in their introduction, “one that builds on the method of ‘collection,’ as opposed to the other two more common methods, ‘migration’ and ‘emulation,’ by providing scholars wanting to experience the work in its original format access to video documentation of the works in performance on a computer with which the work would have been originally experienced.”

Alongside videos of traversals, Pathfinders also includes videos of interviews with the artists and readers of the four main works; photos of physical artifacts such as floppies, folio covers or boxes containing floppies and other media; sound files from traversals and interviews; and commentary about the works and media.