Research Questions

While the literary and environmental associations of the English Lake District are iconic, the historical role of the book as multi-media event, and especially the travel book, is also central in developing the region’s distinct local identity. Equally important is the impact of the digital revolution on its natural and cultural heritage. Applying digital tools to study the book ecology of the English Lake District, we can begin to map the extent to which its local sense of place is informed by and linked to global geographic space.

Our location in the Canadian Pacific Northwest underscores the project’s principal stakes in questions of cultural heritage, the environment, and the globalization of space.

How does it matter when a historical collection of travel literature travels  – that British domestic travel literature about a region such as the Lake District, a place that has long been an icon of attachment to the local, migrates to a distant global and former colonial destination in Vancouver, Canada?

In what ways might the physical migration of the collection from the English Lake District to the Canadian Pacific inform a second migration across media platforms?