AustLit
This chronology is a brief overview of the history of AustLit, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the database going online (in this form) in September 2001.
For the anniversary celebrations, we have also produced a more detailed history of the database, which expands on the items listed in this chronology.
1980
Lu Rees presents her archive of children's books, numbering over 1500 items, to the Canberra College of Advanced Education: it becomes the Lu Rees Archive.
1981
Western Australian Literature: A Bibliography is published, tracking works by authors with Western Australian ties and works concerning Western Australia.
1985
The 1970s' card catalogue is transferred to electronic form, called AUSTLIT: the process, including transferring the information and cleaning up the data, lasts until 1987.
1988
AUSTLIT is launched as a telnet service by the Honourable Gough Whitlam.
The Bibliography of Australian Literature project begins in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University.
1992
A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers is published out of Deakin University's Centre for Studies in Literary Education. It will contribute the data for one of the foundational AustLit datasets.
AUSTLIT is published as a CD-ROM by Informit at RMIT.
1995
A Bibliography of Literary Responses to 'Asia' is published out of Flinders University in Adelaide. It will contribute the data for one of the foundational AustLit datasets.
The South Australian Women Creative Writers Database begins at Flinders University in Adelaide. It will contribute the data for one of the foundational AustLit datasets.
List of Australian Writers 1788-1992 is published by the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University.
1996
SETIS, the Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service, is established at the University of Sydney: it becomes a key participant in the AustLit project.
1997
From Page to Stage: An Annotated Bibliography of Australian Drama, compiled by Kerry Kilner at Monash University, receives initial funding from the Australian Research Council. It will form one of AustLit's foundational projects.
AUSTLIT, which has continued to develop since its 1988 launch, reaches half a million citations.
1998
The planning committee for the Australian Literature Subject Gateway is formed. The committee needs to find a way to reconcile a range of disparate bibliographical and other research databases.
2000
The original AustLit corpus is developed from pre-existing sources and a robust indexing interface developed.
2001
Bibliography of Australian Literature: Volume 1 is published.
AustLit is released online in September.
AustLit's Advanced Search launched at the end of the year, allowing complex searches of the database.
2002
AustLit is formally launched by then Minister for Education, Dr Brendan Nelson, in August 2002.
The database functionality continues to develop, including the Personal Alert Service and increasing sophistication of the Advanced Search functions.
2003
AustLit begins incorporating thousands of descriptive records for The Australian Journal, held on card files at the University of Sydney.
The Australian Magazines of the 20th Century project is developed: it will cover 100 magazines.
Western Australian Writing: An Online Anthology is launched: its development was supported as part of the University of Western Australia's collaboration with AustLit.
2004
The Writers of Tropical Queensland project is initiated at James Cook University: it will launch in 2005.
Australian Multicultural Writers expands its coverage, with a particular focus on Chinese-Australian writers.
Bibliography of Australian Literature: Volume 2 is published.
AustLit formally changes its name to AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature
2005
AustLit introduces the category 'children's literature', replacing earlier uses of 'novel', 'short story', etc. for children's writing.
A successful LIEF grant supports AustLit's development for a futher three years.
2006
The Australian Popular Theatre dataset begins development, focusing on theatrical production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
AustLit reaches 500,000 work records.
The Literature of Tasmania dataset becomes functional: focused development of this dataset will continue until 2008.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers dataset, one of AustLit's foundational specialist subsets, is developed into BlackWords.
2007
Reading in the Victorian Classroom is developed from Deakin University, with a focus on Victorian school readers from 1927 to 1930.
Five inter-related projects are developed under the umbrella of Resourceful Reading: Reading by Numbers, Late 20th Century Anthologies, Asylum Seeker Narratives, Australian Literature in the 'Translation Zone', and Australian Newspaper Reviews of 1930.
BlackWords is formally launched at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.
Multicultural Writers expands its coverage of publications in languages other than English and community-based writing initiatives.
Bibliography of Australian Literature: Volume 3 is launched.
2008
The Pulp Fiction project begins: it will continue until 2011, tracking the popular publishing industry between 1939 and 1959.
AustLit launches its new redesign, which indexers will come to call 'Big Red'.
The Goldfield Bards of Western Australia project begins, managed out of the University of Western Australia.
Developed from the Writers of Tropical Queensland project, Writing the Teopical North extends coverage to writers from and works about the Northern Territory and Western Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
The Banned in Australia project is formally launched: it covers some 500 works restricted or banned by the Australian government between 1901 and 1973.
AustLit's Teaching Aust Lit (TAL) project page goes live, tracking the teaching of Australian literature in Australian and international universities.
The Children's Literature Digital Resource (CLDR) is funded through a LIEF grant: it will produce a full-text repository of Australian children's literature from 1830 to 1945.
2009
The Colonial Newspapers and Magazines begins, helping enable a comprehensive evaluation of the literary culture between 1788 and 1900.
Australian Popular Medievalism gets underway, tracking Europe in the Middle Ages as a setting for Australian fiction.
ScreenLit, a large-scale expansion of AustLit's coverage to include film and television works, begins: screen works remain a core aspect of AustLit's regular indexing practices.
2011
Speculations begins: it aims to increase bibliographical and biographical covers of works of science fiction, horror, and fantasy and their authors.
The development of Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing at QUT is underway, tracking works with Asian-Australian themes, settings, and characters, as well as translations into Asian languages.
2012
AustLit begins a comprehensive redesign of both the public interface and the indexing infrastructure: this is the version of the database still in use today.
The World War One in Australian Literary Culture project begins: this internal AustLit project tracks literary representations of the war.
2013
Trauma Texts, examining trauma in Australian life writing between 1990 to 2015, begins development at Flinders University.
At UNSW@ADFA, an exhibition is held to mark 25 years since the launch of AustLit's predecessor AUSTLIT.
2014
World War One in Australian Literary Culture is launched to mark the centenary of the start of World War I.
2015
Children's Literature and the Environment, the third children's literature project out of QUT, is completed.
Dr Roger Osborne's Joseph Furphy Archive is launched: it aims to provide greater access to the material archive behind Furphy's fiction and poetry.
2016
The Australian Drama Archive, which digitises Australian drama from before The Summer of the Seventeeth Doll, is established.
A Companion to the Australian Media, originally published as a monumental volume by Australian Scholarly Published, is released as a digital edition on AustLit.
Players, Professor Anne Pender's collection of essays on significant Australian actors, is published.
2017
Beyond Goggles and Corsets , a survey of steampunk by Australian authors and set in Australia, is published.
Courting Blakness, the website and associated publications of the art exhibition held in 2014, is moved to AustLit for archival purposes.
Contemporary Settler Literature, an outcome of Dr Travis Franks' Fulbright Scholarship, is made available.
2018
Work begins on Writing Disability in Australia, aggregating writing on disability in AustLit into a searchable index: the project is launched in 2019.
Waves of Fiction begins, exploring the concept of surfing in Australian creative writing.
The Picture Book Diet, tracking representations of food in Australian picture books, is completed.
2019
Climate Change in Australian Narratives, an AustLit project tracking cli-fi, is launched.
In partnership with Cherry Smyth's S.W. Brooks lecture, AustLit releases a survey of the Irish Famine in Australian writing.
2020
The Writer's Press, a digital edition of the history of UQP, is published.
During the early months of the pandemic, AustLit traces its effects on the arts in COVID-19 in the Australian Arts.
Swimming Wild, a bibliographical survey of 'wild swimming', is released.
Liminal Spaces, Solitary Places, surveying literature about lighthouses, is made public.
101 Black Voices, compiled by Professor Sandy O'Sullivan, is published on BlackWords in the wake of George Floyd's murder.
2021
The Miles Franklin Rights Project, a survey of international editions of Miles Franklin Award winning and shortlisted works, is made public.
AustLit celebrates twenty years since its launch in September 2001.