AustLit's consortium of scholars and librarians from Australian universities was formed in 1999 with two main purposes: to house a range of existing research and bibliographical projects relating to Australia's literary and print-culture history, and to build the technical and intellectual infrastructure necessary to support further scholarship in the field.

Since AustLit's inception, the Australian Research Council has provided generous support through its Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities schemes. This support helped develop AustLit's information architecture and the database content, full text, and website interface. Internal research and infrastructure grants awarded to researchers from participating universities have supplemented this funding. Since AustLitís establishment, its Research Communities have supported and continue to support projects that are funded by ARC Discovery, Fellowship, and ALTC grants.

Subscription income has supported the continued updating of the database with information on contemporary primary and secondary publications, and up-to-date information on Australian authors, organisations, awards, and other events.

AustLit is governed by a Board of Management with members derived from all partner organisations, and a UQ Management Committee with members derived from the Faculty of Arts and the UQ Library.

The University of Queensland has been the lead university since 2002, following UNSW at ADFA's lead status in the project's first years (2000-2001).

AustLit's foundational database was formed in 2000 from two existing projects: AUSTLIT: Australian Literary Database (at UNSW at ADFA) and Australia's Literary Heritage (at Monash University and The University of Queensland).

AUSTLIT: Australian Literary Database was a citation-rich service, tracing publications of both secondary and primary material.

Australia's Literary Heritage included The Bibliography of Australian Literature Project and the focused biographical and bibliographical projects that now form AustLit's Research Communities.

The lead university provides significant levels of core non-operational funding, infrastructure, office, and administrative support, and acts as the point of contact for all enquiries. All partner universities provide infrastructural support to staff working on AustLit-funded projects.