A major aim of AustLit is to support and assist with developing resources for research into Australia's literary and print cultures.

AustLit Research Communities are one way we work with researchers, individually or in groups, to explore, describe and deliver access to detailed information about particular aspects of those cultures through the AustLit interface.

Outcomes from these collaborative research projects include articles, essays and searchable filtered sets of biographical and bibliographical records that reflect the specialist research interests of AustLit Contributors or other researchers. Many of the projects have been funded through the Australian Research Council, internal university grants or other funding bodies.

AustLit subscribers can search for information across the whole AustLit database, or limit their searches to a subset of data arising from a Research Community's work by defining a scope in the Quick Search box, which appears on every AustLit screen, or through Guided Search or the Advanced Search.

STOP PRESS!! From late 2008 significant new services for AustLit research communities will be developed over the next three years. Watch this page and read the AustLit newsletter for updates on progress.

The The Australian Book History and Print Culture Research Community has been established to recognise and encourage research that examines the composition, publication, distribution and reading of Australian literature.

The Australian Magazines subset was produced by a special research project to map the history, span, editorship and content of 100 twentieth century Australian periodicals and newspapers. The subset traces the activities and achievements, the highs and lows, the relationships and fallings-out of some of Australia's most interesting agents for change in the growth and recognition of Australia's literary and artistic culture as manifested in the magazines.

The Australian Children's Literature subset provides information about Australian writing for children and young adults, and about those who write for them.

The Literature of Tasmania subset provides bibliographical information about all aspects of writing about Van Diemen's Land and Tasmania. The subset contains information about authors who were born in, visited or have written about Tasmania. It also includes information about newspapers and journals from the early colonial period (1803-1850), continuing Aboriginal writing in Tasmania, popular fiction set in Tasmania, Tasmania as a distinctive region in the literary imagination, and other aspects of literary production in Tasmania. The subset is being developed from January 2006 to the end of 2008.

The Australian Popular Fictions Research Community aims to create the most comprehensive resource relating to authors, texts and the publishing history of Australian popular, pulp and genre fiction by drawing together readers and scholars working in the field of popular culture research as it relates to literary narratives across Australian history.

The Writing the Tropical North subset contains information by and about authors who were born in, lived in, visited or wrote about areas of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn. It also includes information about journalists, columnists, editors, newspapers, periodicals and associated companies and individuals important to the cultural life of the region.

Begun in 2004 as Writers of Tropical Queensland, the subset widened its scope from 2008 to become Writers of the Tropical North. The team of researchers based at James Cook University in Townsville, in conjunction with the University of Western Australia and the Black Words team, are opening up the comparatively unexplored literature associated with the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia as areas of specific AustLit research focus. They expect to discover many features that in general distinguish the literature of the Australian Tropics from works produced in more temperate southern zones.