ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some of the key issues wherein world literature studies are influenced by the digital revolution. It discusses how access to literature has changed and how machine translation is providing a new perspective on linguistic barriers. The chapter focuses on the improved understanding of the circulation of literature, which better access to data and the creation of new types of data has brought about. Many resources are invested in making the literary cultural heritage accessible in digital form. There are numerous projects, with Google Books the most significant, that digitize literature and make it machine readable and accessible. In principle, translations and library holdings could have been calculated before digitization, but in practice it makes a significant difference that UNESCO’s database gives access to the data. The digitization of communication has had a huge impact, not least in generating new senses of belonging that defy the boundaries set by national borders and their accompanying media ecologies.
