Please note that this site is an archive. For current information on tools created by the Aus-e-Lit project, plase visit the AustLit Toolkit pages.

Recent developments in internet technology have enabled people to more actively engage with both internet resources and each other in online networked environments. With a wide selection of platforms and with little technical knowledge, internet users can create a blog or website in just a few minutes. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have shown how easily online communication networks can be established. In such environments, the exponential growth of data about ourselves, our interests, and our knowledge demonstrates how quickly we can gather and exploit crowd-sourced information for our own benefit and for the benefit of others. We have only just begun to understand how such technology can assist and affect the way that scholars in the humanities conduct research.

AustLit data has been available on the internet since 1998. Since that time, teams of indexers and researchers have expanded and enhanced this data, producing one of the most comprehensive resources for the study of a national literature anywhere in the world. AustLit provides information on more than one hundred thousand agents and more than six hundred thousand works from the late eighteenth century to the present day. This enables users to conduct highly targeted searches or to consider large-scale trends extracted from the data collection. From those interested in a close reading of a poem or novel to those interested in a distant reading of the development of a particular genre, AustLit data supports a variety of research methodologies.

But developments in internet technology such as those mentioned above have the potential to enable AustLit users to assert a greater sense of ownership over the records that are relevant to their research interests. Libraries, archives, and other initiatives at local, national, and international levels are pursuing programs that expose their collections to internet users via digital representations such as scanned images and transcriptions. Large collections of relevant material are waiting for the researcher or student of Australian literature.

Responding to the growth of internet resources and the potential of open-source software to discover, organise, describe, and share these resources, the Aus-e-Lit Project will deliver a suite of online research tools to AustLit users in June 2011. A collaboration between AustLit and The University of Queensland eResearch Lab, the Aus-e-Lit Project has developed a Federated Search and a Full-text Search that enhance the standard AustLit search with a snapshot of resources available at a selection of relevant databases. Building on specifications recommended by the Open Archives Initiative, the Project has also developed an extension to the Firefox browser (LORE: Literature Online Re-use and Exchange) that supports online annotation of internet resources and enables users to collect, organise, describe, and share these resources. Easily installed, LORE enables AustLit users to more actively engage with internet resources and to collaborate in an online, networked environment that can potentially serve as a Research Commons for the AustLit community.

The Federated Search and the AustLit Full-text Search are alternatives to the default Quick Search on the AustLit home page. Checking Federated Search currently activates a search across the following external databases: AusStage, Picture Australia, People Australia, Australasian Digital Theses, Internet Archive, Books and Collectibles, and Google Book Search. More targets will be added to the Federated Search in due course.

As in the example of Patrick White above, the Federated Search delivers not only results from AustLit agents and works, but also from the external databases, which in this case includes images of the author, performances of his plays from AusStage, criticism of his works from AustLit Full-text, biographical information from People Australia, completed theses from Australasian Digital Theses, and a host of results from the other databases. Users can also view AustLit results in a Timeline View by choosing that option from EXPORT/FORMAT ON SCREEN AS:.

LORE extends the Firefox Browser by adding several tools that enable users to more actively engage with the websites they are viewing. The Annotation Tool enables users to highlight the section of the page that they are interested in and then write notes or queries that they can save and share with students or colleagues. All annotations record details of authorship, including a name and the date and time when the annotation was created.

Retrospective and current indexing for AustLit is the responsibility of a team of indexers and researchers across the country. User-generated annotations of AustLit records can add information outside the scope of everyday indexing and provide the opportunity to correct or enhance existing records. For example, researchers interested in book history and print culture could add information about print runs, sales, literary agents, and distribution.

With Compound Objects, researchers can collect, organise, and describe relevant resources. As with the Annotation tool, details of authorship are clearly marked. When used in conjunction with the Annotation Tool, a Compound Object provides a useful work-site to conduct individual and collaborative research. For instance, users can collect and annotate resources related to an author’s correspondence.

The tool also has other applications. The National Library of Australia is currently digitising major daily newspapers from 1842-1954, covering a period when newspapers provided one of Australia’s most prominent publishing platforms for poets and novelists. Using LORE, instalments of serialisations such as John Cleary’s No Taste for Trouble.

The linked data that users create with Compound Objects builds a significant network of relationships between people, works, and organisations. Users can explore these relationships using LORE's other tools. Combining mined data from hyperlinks in AustLit and additional relationships created with LORE, users can visualise and explore even the most complex networks – such as the network of relationships that can be inferred from the writer, performer, producer, and comic Nat Phillips. Over time individuals or collaborators can extend these inferred relationships, defining complex networks of social relationships for future researchers to search and analyse.

In preparation for general release in June 2011, this suite of Aus-e-Lit tools is currently being refined in response to feedback from a group of advisors that include researchers, students, and librarians with expertise in the study of Australian literature. Feedback from additional members of the research community is very welcome. Technical information can be found at the Aus-e-Lit Project page hosted by the UQ eResearch Lab. For further information about participating in Aus-e-Lit development, please contact the Project Manager, Roger Osborne: r.osborne@uq.edu.au.

Software Engineers: Anna Gerber; Chris Davoren (2008-2009); Andrew Hyland (2009-2010); Damien Ayers (2010-)

Project Manager: Dr Roger Osborne

Team Leaders: Professor Jane Hunter, UQ eResearch Lab, School of ITEE; Kerry Kilner, Director, AustLit Research and Publications.

A new collection of video tutorials can be viewed here.

To arrange a pre-deployment trial or for more information, please contact the Project Manager, Roger Osborne: r.osborne@uq.edu.au.