Since July 2008, the Aus-e-Lit Project has been developing a number of new services that will extend AustLit by supporting broader searches and by allowing users to collect and annotate relevant internet resources.

An experimental Federated Search provides results from both AustLit and a selection of external databases. This includes a Full-Text Search across several collections of AustLit full-texts, incorporating several hundred volumes of poetry and fiction published before the 1930s and a large number of selected critical essays. The Full-Text Search can be conducted either in conjunction with or independent from the Federated Search. Users can conduct these searches from AustLit's main page.

The Aus-e-Lit Project has also developed tools that enable annotation of most internet resources and a compound object authoring tool that allows users to bookmark, describe, and relate disparate internet resources. These services are supported by LORE (Literature Object Re-use and Exchange), an extension to the Firefox browser. These tools are currently being tested by experts in the field of Australian literary and print-culture studies. Following this period of testing, the tools will be freely available to AustLit users.

This page provides brief introductions to these tools with short video tutorials. We welcome feedback on any aspect of the Aus-e-Lit Project. To arrange a pre-release trial of LORE or for more information on other Aus-e-Lit services, please contact the Project Manager, Dr Roger Osborne: r.osborne@uq.edu.au..

The Federated Search enables AustLit users to conduct a single, simultaneous search across AustLit and a selection of external databases. For a current list and description of Federated Search targets, please see the AustLit page on Federated Search data sources. The following video tutorial uses the example of a keyword search on Kenneth Slessor to show a full range of results.

A Full-Text Search can be conducted independently from the Federated Search. Currently, the AustLit full-text collection contains works from Children's Literature Resources, Primary Fiction and Poetry, Criticism, and the AustLit Anthology of Criticism. More works will be added to these collections in the future and new collections will be established for particular periods or themes. Further details can be found by going to the AustLit Full-Text Search page.

LORE is an extension to the Firefox Browser and can be easily downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox Add-ons site. To arrange a pre-release trial of LORE, please contact the Aus-e-Lit project manager, Roger Osborne: r.osborne@uq.edu.au.

Annotation is an ancient research method that continues today in electronic form. LORE’s Annotation Service allows users to annotate web-pages and share these annotations with colleagues and students.

Most internet users have a collection of bookmarks of their favourite internet resources, but the ability to describe these resources and relate them to other internet resources is limited. LORE enables users to bookmark internet resources, describe them using standard terms, and relate them to other resources. The video demonstrates how to quickly bookmark, describe, and relate internet resources. As with annotations, the compound objects are stored as RDF (Resource Description Framework), allowing the Firefox browser to efficiently retrieve and display the bookmarked internet resources.

Further videos are being produced to demonstrate specific applications and research tasks that can be pursued with LORE. These include 'Using LORE to Explore Networks and Circles in Australia's Literary Culture', 'About RDF', 'Creating an Electronic Edition of Australian Serials Using LORE and the Australian Newspapers', and 'Collaborative Annotation Using LORE'.