“[t]he cell, the smallest autopoietic structure known today . . . the minimal unit that is capable of incessant self-organizing metabolism.” (Humberto Maturana)

The Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL) is an open access, non-commercial resource offering centralized access to literary databases, archives, and institutional programs in the literary arts and scholarship, with a  focus on electronic literature. CELL was founded by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). It currently includes ten members and is designed to allow for the integration of many more. The first phase of CELL’s project––a search engine that harvests and aggregates records from across eight partner databases––was funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant and developed at the NT2 Lab in Montreal.