I know there are certain authors, and perhaps periods where news of a change happening would be of great interest to me.

I’d add publicizing churchwide and encouraging writers (and those who know them) to input their own entries

Publicizing Church wide is actually a good argument in favor of maintaining BYU institutional support — its much easier to get Church cooperation in promoting a BYU site than it is a private site.

I also like the idea of encouraging writers to look at and correct their entries, because of wha I recently noticed following Mahonri Stewart’s reaction on Facebook (see his September 3, 2009 entry) to Katya’s page about him on her Mormon Arts wikia project. Mahonri promoted the page quite substantially, and it made the “featured” list for a week or so. [FWIW, Mahonri has 929 friends on Facebook at the moment.]

So, I’m sure that having the MLCA database more accessible, where authors can make sure their entries are up-to-date, could very well make it much better known.

Links to all possible book/play/etc. reviews. I know that some of these are included already, but this is one of the areas where improvement is definitely needed.

Links to full text versions whenever possible.

What about blogs re: Mormon letters and related topics? I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, including (say) every essay Kent Larson or William Morris has published would make the database pretty crowded. On the other hand, some of the best writing and thinking around is now taking place on blogs. Where does one draw the line? (I understand that AML is also working on creating a blog with periodic contributions from people, which will be great when it gets running.)

We also need some kind of clearer indication of what has and hasn’t been catalogued already. I notice that my review essay on Mormon elements in Angels in America (published in Irreantum) has not, for example, been listed. This suggested to me that Irreantum has not been systematically included. If we could track what has and hasn’t been done, that would make it easier for volunteers to contribute.

One key element, in my view, is to get Mormon writers more aware of the Mormon Lit database. I posted at length on this in response to Kent’s recent blog on Tracking the Elusive Mormon Author (http://www.motleyvision.org/2009/tracking-the-elusive-mormon-author/), but my comments came at the end of the discussion and seem to have dropped out of notice. Part of that effort could include an article about the Mormon Lit database in BYU Magazine. I’d add publicizing churchwide and encouraging writers (and those who know them) to input their own entries as one of the potential points for Gideon’s proposal.

Oh, and some cookbooks are literature, and a few have been transformed into literature (perhaps “Like Water for Chocolate”?)

BTW, I should mention that at least one Mediawiki extention, called Semantic Mediawiki, could resolve the structure issue that makes Mediawiki (the software behind Wikipedia) less appealing. The only problem with Semantic Mediawiki is that it would require additional markup of the information in each page, and training of users to use it properly.

BUT, since the initial data for a mediawiki implementation of the MLCA database would be from an import of the current data, the vast majority of entries could be properly marked from day one, which would help both training and data integrity.

Its not perfect, by I think mediawiki may be the best way to go at the moment.

I’d also add that Gideon had mentioned an API. I think this is a fascinating idea. If you had people who knew how to work with it, the API could be used to create applications such as storefronts, to feed lists like the AML Award winners and, say, a start a Mormon canon, a “Mormon artist of the day” app, etc. If the community is going to put in sweat equity by helping add information to the database, it’d be cool if we could then pull it out easily.

One note on meta data information and data integrity: whether that data was made public or not, references and sources would become more important with a crowdsourced approach.