AustLit
This section of our digital history of AustLit covers the early years of the database, from its inclusion of the foundational projects and its launch as AustLit: The Australian Literature Gateway to its re-naming as AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature.
During the core development phase, a period of a little over a year, the AustLit system was designed and built; 350,000+ work records and 40,000+ agent records from twelve different databases, each with their own data structure and standard, were transferred to the new AustLit; and a maintenance interface was developed, supporting ongoing bibliographical work by staff at eight Australian universities.
As Executive Manager Dr Marie-Louise Ayres noted (in 'Case Studies in Implementing Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records'): 'Every new database brought new problems and we were not able to reapply previous conversion solutions.'
Among the pre-existing datasets incorporated into AustLit as part of this work were Australian Literary Responses to 'Asia', Australian Multicultural Writers, and South Australian Women Writers. They formed three of the eight 'specialist subsets' with which AustLit launched in late 2001, alongside Australian Drama, Children's Literature (and the Lu Rees Archive), Western Australian Literature, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Literature (later BlackWords), and SETIS.
For more on these foundational projects, see the first part of this exhibition, Before AustLit.
The result of more than 20 years of collaborative research into the publication history of creative writing by Australian authors, The Bibliography of Australian Literature (BAL) continues a long tradition of bibliographical scholarship in Australia.
It was a foundational AustLit project, and the two continued to work together during the publication of the four volumes of BAL.
Volume two was launched at the Fryer Library at The University of Queensland in November 2004.
Read more about The Bibliography of Australian Literature on AustLit.
September 2001: AustLit is Released for Beta Testing as a Free Trial
Although AustLit has had many predecessors and several new faces, this launch of the new database online in September 2001 is the date that we are marking in these anniversary celebrations: twenty years since the bibliography was made available to researchers and readers as a web-enabled database.
Can you imagine the AustLit database without the Advanced Search option?
When this was launched in the months following AustLit's release, the newsletter noted that it 'allows you to construct your own search on any of the AustLit work or author fields.'
Now, twenty years later, the AustLit Advanced Search is a powerful tool for delivering either broad or finely granular search results across the entire database—from bringing up the records for all female authors to only returning results for female authors of Greek heritage who were born in the 1950s. The Advanced Search is fully integrated with AustLit's research projects, so you can search the entire database or limit your results to a single project.
2002: Tessa Wooldridge Takes Over the AustLit Newsletter
Those who subscribed to the newsletter in this period will remember Tessa's comprehensive newsletters, full of industry tidbits, literary news, and information about the database, its researchers, and its projects.
Tessa was one of AustLit's longest-serving indexers, starting with our predecessor AUSTLIT and spending twenty-one years in the role.
You can read Tessa's memoir of her time with AustLit elsewhere in our anniversary celebrations.
Describing AustLit as a 'book lover’s dream — delivered by the latest in Australian innovation', Dr Nelson launched the database at the National Library of Australia, a partner organisation in AustLit's development and one that has continued to be closely involved with AustLit in the twenty years since.
'The AustLit project is an excellent example of research collaboration across the higher education sector, and has won broad support in research, education and library communities throughout Australia.'
'AustLit will help enrich and sustain our literary culture,' said Dr Nelson. 'I am pleased to launch today an Australian first; a unique website which will enhance research and learning in literature for the whole community.' (Parliamentary Media Release.)
Late 2002: AustLit Continues to Develop Database Functionality
Among the features added to the database in late 2002 were the Personal Alert Service, which allowed you to get automatic search results emailed to you, and increasingly nuanced additions to the Advanced Search functions: for example, in November / December 2002, the Advanced Search was adjusted to allow searching on attributes within works, such as genre.
Under the guidance of the new chief investigators and other members of the AustLit Committee, the database reached out into new areas, focusing on the following research projects:
- Australian Magazines of the 20th Century
- Ongoing BAL project
- Late 19th and Early 20th Century Poetry Anthologies
- The Australian Journal
2003: AustLit Begins Incorporating Descriptive Records of The Australian Journal
Held in card files at the University of Sydney, these thousands of descriptive records contained fully annotated bibliographical information on the entire literary content of the 19th/20th century magazine.
The incorporation of these records into AustLit made them searchable and opened up understanding of the careers of authors such as Rolf Boldrewood, Charles Harpur, and Ada Cambridge. The work was led out of the University of Sydney.
The incorporation of these records was the beginning of a period of increased focus on newspapers and magazines, which led to such research projects as Jill Julius Matthews' Hidden Treasures of the Mitchell Library: Sydney Periodicals, 1895-1930, published on AustLit in 2010.
Explore The Australian Journal on AustLit.
Use AustLit's Advanced Search functions to search within The Australian Journal.
In keeping with the focus on newspapers and magazines, Australian Magazines of the 20th Century resulted in detailed bio-bibliographical records for 100 magazines published in Australia during the twentieth century.
Led by Professor David Carter and AustLit Director Kerry Kilner and with research by Dr Roger Osborne, the project resulted in hundreds of records describing the history, content, editorship, span, and publication story of numerous literary journals and cultural magazines.
An innovative digital anthology of Western Australian literary heritage, Western Australian Writing: An Online Anthology was supported as part of the University of Western Australia's collaboration in the development of the AustLit Gateway.
Research was undertaken by Dan Midalia, a highly experienced bibliographer who went on to work part-time for AustLit. After his departure, research into Western Australian writers was largely undertaken by Charles McLaughlin .
Poet and novelist John Kinsella says in the preface to the anthology:
The idea of Western Australia [...] is vast and encompasses many landscapes and identities. In the 1930s there was a strong desire among many to secede from the rest of Australia, and some would argue that feeling is still there. It’s a long way from the centres of Australian power on the east coast. In more recent decades, Western Australians have overcome this perceived isolation and separation by envisaging themselves as a kind of West Coast, belonging, but with its own identities.
Read the AustLit memories of Dan Midalia, who worked on the foundational bibliographies of Western Australian writing and continued that work into the early years of the database.
2004: The Writers of Tropical Queensland Dataset is Initiated
James Cook University became AustLit's new research partner as Dr Cheryl Taylor undertook (with the support of research assistants) special research into the writers and writing associated with the North Queensland region.
Writers of Tropical Queensland aimed to develop comprehensive biographical and bibliographical records for authors who were born in, lived in, visited or wrote about Queensland north of the Tropic of Capricorn, as well as information about journalists, columnists, editors, newspapers, periodicals and associated companies and individuals important to the cultural life of the region.
The project would be developed over a period of eight years, until James Cook University's association with AustLit ended in late 2012.
Since the writers associated with tropical Queensland often contributed to southern as well as local newspapers, they were the chief interpreters of the region, not only to its own people, but also to readers throughout Australia. (Dr Cheryl Taylor, 'Introduction')
The project was formally launched by AustLit Director Kerry Kilner at James Cook University on 6 May 2005.
Read Dr Cheryl Taylor's introduction to this project.
2004: Australian Multicultural Writers Expands Its Coverage of Chinese-Australian Writers
The researchers working on multicultural Australian writers (centred, at this time, at Deakin University) have concentrated on different groups of writers at different times in AustLit's history.
In late 2004, they were focusing on (among others) Chinese-Australian writers.
Previously known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway, the database renamed itself AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature.
While not, seemingly, the most monumental of changes, this name change, alongside the new projects that had been developed across the years since AustLit's launch, marked a new chapter in AustLit's history: not only a gateway to resources, but a deepening resource in its own right.