AustLit

Firstly, we need to welcome Brenden Jeon, our new web developer, to the team. Brenden, now a Brisbanite, comes to us via Seoul, South Korea. He will be working on several projects described below, including the Australian Newspapers poetry project, as well as contributing to the development of AusArts. Welcome Brenden!

AusArts

The AustLit development team is in the midst of a large project that allows the AustLit content management system to be used by tertiary students. This system is called AusArts. As well as allowing students to create mini web sites that they can publish and use as part of their web portfolio, it also allows for online annotation of text and images. Classes involved in the preliminary run of this system have used it to facilitate discussion and critique around creative writing pieces and create exhibitions about Dorothy Blewett's play The First Joanna, and next semester art history courses will use it to allow the informed annotation of various art works.

Poetry from Australian Newspapers

Brenden will also be taking over the development of the Australian newspapers poetry project from Kent Fitch. The project looks to automatically harvest poetry from the NLA's online historical newspaper collection, and add new records to the AustLit database where appropriate. Both developers have been looking at various ways to automatically identify a poem on a page using methods as diverse as checking for the presence of staggered line indentation, rhyming dictionaries, and Bayesian analysis.