AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (also known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature), is the national bio-bibliographical database of Australian Literature. It is an internet-based, non-profit collaboration between researchers and librarians from Australian universities, housed at The University of Queensland (UQ). The AustLit database comprises a comprehensive bio-bibliographical record of Australian storytelling and print cultures with over 1 million individual 'work' records, and over 75 discrete research projects.

AustLit
History2000–
LanguagesEnglish, Australian Aboriginal languages
Access
CostBy subscription; individuals may access it via their library. Limited guest access.
Coverage
DisciplinesAustralian literature: including criticism, bibliography, biography
Geospatial coverageAustralia
Links
Websitewww.austlit.edu.au

One such project, BlackWords, is a landmark research project and comprehensive dataset by and within AustLit that details the lives and work of Indigenous Australian authors, which includes Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers.

History

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AustLit, as it is known today, was formed in 1998, when groups of researchers across eight universities (UNSW @ ADFA, The University of Queensland, Monash University, Flinders University, Deakin, the University of Western Australia, the University of Canberra, and the University of Sydney) and the National Library of Australia, who had created several independent databases on a variety of themes related to literary studies, combined the datasets into a single information space. This cooperation and collaboration created AustLit.[1] The AustLit website was released online in 2001, and formally launched in 2002.

Initially led by UNSW at ADFA, the University of Queensland has led the consortium since 2002, although AustLit is now overseen wholly by The University of Queensland.[2] The first dataset comprised about 300,000 biographical and bibliographical records, many in the form of indexes to magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals.[3] Most of the indexing has been done at UQ since 2014 and AustLit is now maintained and published by UQ.[4]

Over the years, AustLit has been funded by participating universities, with various projects funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC).[3] One example of ARC funding was A$500,000 provided for a 2008 project to complete the retrospective record of Australian book history, establish a new resource for historical research on children's literature, and to further develop the database of Indigenous Australian writers and story tellers (see BlackWords below).[5]

In 2012, AustLit underwent a comprehensive redesign of both the public interface and the indexing infrastructure, creating the current version of AustLit.

Owing to funding cuts to the participating universities, AustLit had to make a change to its indexing policies from 2017, including a reduction in the number of periodicals indexed. Periodicals' publication details are still provided, and the contents of a range of significant newspapers, periodicals, and anthologies are still indexed, but the comprehensive indexing of contents, particularly in sole-author collections, is no longer undertaken.[6] However, there is a system whereby volunteers can help to index these works.[7]

Organisation and governance

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Names have varied over time. While the official name is AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, it has also been known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature, but the organisation, website and database are generally referred to simply as AustLit.[4]

Partner universities include the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, Flinders University (in Adelaide), the University of Wollongong, James Cook University (North Queensland), Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, University of Canberra, University of Tasmania, and the University of Western Australia. The National Library of Australia is also a collaborating partner. UQ's School of Communication and Arts provide most of AustLit's "core non-operational funding, infrastructure, office, and administrative support".[2]

Kerry Kilner, who was involved with the project since 1999, was the director of AustLit since 2002. In 2020, Dr Catriona Mills (AustLit’s Content Manager and senior bibliographer) took on the role of Acting Director until July 2023, when Associate Professor Maggie Nolan stepped into the directorship role. Professor Anita Heiss was the inaugural coordinatar of BlackWords.[8]

Data Model

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AustLit was the first large-scale implementation of the FRBR Model (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) in the world. Rather than treat each publication as a separate entity, as standard library cataloguing does, the FRBR model represents the publication history of works by incorporating the following four concepts of Work, Expression, Manifestation and Item into a single record. AustLit expanded the model with 'event modelling', showcasing creation events for Works, realisation events for Expressions, and embodiment events for Manifestations. It gives attributes to Works, Expressions, Manifestations, Agents, Creation, Realisation and Manifestation events. Additionally, it introduced the concept of a Super Work and includes contextual records about individuals and organisations beyond the standard library catalogue.[9]

AustLit adopted the FRBR model as it was the best choice to serve as a comprehensive information hub for Australian writers and their works, regardless of format. It offers enriched research-friendly data, documents publishing histories, contextualises works, and establishes diverse relationships among authors, organisations, works, places, times, subjects, settings, and publishers. [2]

Coverage and activities

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BlackWords logo

AustLit publishes biographical entries and brief essays on Australian writers, critics and storytellers, organisational histories relating to publishers, theatre companies and other arts organisations, arts and other cultural festivals, national and international awards, as well as works of fiction and criticism.[2] Its coverage includes the history and other details of many Australian periodicals.[3]

BlackWords, separately published database within AustLit, covers all aspects of Indigenous Australian literature. It was developed from an existing dataset in 2006, and launched in 2007. As of 2024[10] there are approximately 24,000 indexed works by nearly 7000 authors and organisations indexed on the database, and there are also thousands of full-text works, including The BlackWords Essays, by Professor Anita Heiss. There are many interviews with Indigenous Australian authors, and teaching and educational guides and content.[11]

AustLit has had several digitisation programs to generate full-text versions of out-of-print and out-of-copyright literary works and critical articles about Australian literature;[12][13][14] it provides full-text access to samples of works published from 1795.[15] AustLit also provides access to full-text material hosted by other platforms, including Trove, libraries and other publicly available digitisation projects, as well as electronically published works.[16]

In addition to providing access to already-published works, AustLit publishes new scholarly texts and datasets in digital format, for example, its AustLit: Literature of Tasmania, Beyond Goggles and Corsets: Australian Steampunk and Settler Colonial Literature.[16]

The Australian Multicultural Writers subset includes thousands of writers whose cultural backgrounds are other than Anglo-Celtic.[17]

The South Australian Women Writers dataset contains thousands of records migrated from the original Bibliography of South Australian Women Writers, compiled by Anne Chittleborough, Rick Hosking and Graham Tulloch of Flinders University and published electronically in 1999 by the State Library of South Australia. It was added to AustLit in 2000, and has continued to grow thanks to AustLit contributors. Flinders University is primarily responsible for the further development of this subset,[18] and the dataset was completed in 2003.

Changes in coverage over time

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Over time, some inclusion criteria have widened, for example:[6]

  • As part of the development of BlackWords in 2007, oral histories and life story works started to be included.
  • The Australian Popular Theatre dataset led to the inclusion of burlesque theatre works.
  • The Colonial Newspapers and Magazines Project added advertisements, and also the works of international authors
  • The coverage of scriptwriters in the film and television industry was extended in 2010, together with production history of associated works.

Use in research

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AustLit is a key information resource for the study of Australian literature and related fields. Because of its status as the most comprehensive record of a nation's publishing history, AustLit remains an important source of data for analysing and understanding Australian literary history.[19][20][21]

Researchers can work within AustLit to create datasets around a specific field. These projects range across book, magazine and publishing histories, subject specific surveys of regionally-based publishing and thematically-based subsets. Research into the history of Australian popular and pulp fiction is supported alongside research into theatre history, drama and multicultural writers.[22]

Usage

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AustLit subscriber include research and educational institutions, and libraries, which allow home access for their member communities and subscribers. Guest usage is limited to volunteers and access under special circumstances,[23] and the general public can access five pages per day.

Subscribers can electronically export data from AustLit.[2]

AustLit is archived by the National Library of Australia’s PANDORA archive and the US Library of Congress has archived snapshots of the AustLit website since 2009 as part of its Web Archive collection.[24]

AustLit's copyright policy is that it is free for use under the Creative Commons License: Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Australia.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Ayres, Marie-Louise (1 January 2001). "Austlit: A Gateway on steroids". Computing Arts 2001 : digital resources for research in the humanities : 26th-28th September 2001, Veterinary Science Conference Centre, the University of Sydney / hosted by the Scholarly Text and Imaging Service (SETIS), the University of Sydney Library, and the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS), the University of Sydney.
  2. ^ a b c d e "About AustLit". AustLit. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  3. ^ a b c Kilner, Kerry (30 April 2014). "AustLit and Australian periodical studies". TEXT. 18 (Special 25). doi:10.52086/001c.27482. ISSN 1327-9556.
  4. ^ a b Austlit. "AustLit : The Australian Literature Resource | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  5. ^ "AustLit Phase Two: Research Infrastructure for Humanities and Education Researchers". Monash University. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  6. ^ a b c "About AustLit: Scope, Policies & Practices". AustLit. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  7. ^ Austlit. "About AustLit - FAQs | AustLit". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  8. ^ "About AustLit: The Current Team". AustLit. Archived from the original on 15 March 2021. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  9. ^ Ayres, Marie-Louise (February 2005). "Case Studies in implementing Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records [FRBR]: AustLit and MusicAustralia". The Australian Library Journal. 54 (1): 43–54. doi:10.1080/00049670.2005.10721712. ISSN 0004-9670.
  10. ^ Austlit. "AustLit: Discover Australian Stories". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  11. ^ "Introducing BlackWords by AustLit". National Library of Australia. 11 November 2020. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  12. ^ Austlit. "Children's Literature Digital Resources - Overview of CLDR | AustLit". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  13. ^ Austlit. "The Colonial Newspapers and Magazines Project - About | AustLit". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  14. ^ Austlit. "The AustLit Australian Drama Archive - Introduction | AustLit". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  15. ^ "AustLit". Research Data Australia. 15 August 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  16. ^ a b "AustLit Publishing and Full Text Delivery". AustLit. 18 October 1917. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  17. ^ Jacklin, Michael (1 January 2009). "Multicultural literature in Australia and the AustLit database". inCite. 30 (4): 25–26. Retrieved 15 March 2021 – via Research Online. PDF
  18. ^ "South Australian Women Writers - About". AustLit. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  19. ^ Bode, Katherine. "From British Domination to Multinational Conglomeration: A Revised History of Australian Novel publishing, 1950-2007". Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary Culture, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2009. pp. 194-222.
  20. ^ Kilner, Kerry. "AustLit: Creating a Collaborative Research Space for Australian Literary Studies". Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary Culture, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2009. pp. 299-315.
  21. ^ Ensor, Jason. "Still Waters Run Deep: Empirical Methods and the Migration Patterns of Regional Publishers, Authors and Titles within Australian Literature". Antipodes, December 2009.
  22. ^ Jacklin, Michael (April 2009). "Multicultural Literature in Australia and the AustLit Database". InCite. 30 (4): 25–26 – via University of Wollongong.
  23. ^ "About AustLit: Availability and Access". AustLit. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  24. ^ "AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource". The Library of Congress. 2 June 2009. Retrieved 16 March 2021.

Further reading

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  • Cross, Amy; Allan, Cherie; Kilner, Kerry (2019). "Digital Curation, AustLit, and Australian Children's Literature". International Research in Children's Literature. 12 (1). Edinburgh University Press: 1–17. doi:10.3366/ircl.2019.0287. ISSN 1755-6198. S2CID 197734265.
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