casestudy: Aus-e-Lit

Summary

The Aus-e-Lit project is a NeAT-funded project that aims to address the eResearch needs of researchers involved in the study of Australian literature and Australian print culture.

Project Partners

eResearch University of Queensland

Prof. Jane Hunter - Leader of the eResearch Lab
Dr. Roger Osborne - Aus-e-Lit Project Manager
Anna Gerber
Chris Davoren

AustLit

Kerry Kilner - Director

Funding Body
NCRIS 5.16 National eResearch Architecture Taskforce (NeAT)

Application Area
Text Studies, Literary Studies

Bibliography and Links

• Project Website
• Project Website
• Project Publications

Project Contact Details
Project Manager: Dr. Roger Osborne, University of Queensland

Description of Aims

The Aus-e-Lit project aims to address the eResearch needs of researchers involved in the study of Australian literature and Australian print culture. AustLit is a non-profit collaboration between the National Library of Australia and twelve Universities. It provides an important resource for scholars undertaking research into many aspects of Australian literary heritage and print culture history. The Aus-e-Lit project will enhance and extend the AustLit web portal with:

• Federated search interface that integrates external related repositories such as SETIS, AusStage and PeopleAustralia, and that will enable AustLit users to seamlessly search across relevant databases and archives to retrieve reliable information on a particular author, topic or publication;
• Advanced querying and browsing services that support full-text, metadata-based and empirical-based searches as well as time-map and topic-map based browse interfaces;
• Collaborative annotation and scholarly editing tools that will enable communities of experts to collaboratively select, tag and annotate digital resources with keywords, notes, comments, interpretations, queries, links to related resources etc. and to share these annotations with the research community to enrich the collection and enhance discovery services;
• OAI-ORE authoring tools to allow scholars and teachers to create, edit and publish compound information objects encapsulating related digital resources and bibliographic records. These compound objects may be used to track the lineage of derivative works which are based on a common concept or idea; or to relate disparate objects that are related to a common theme; or to encapsulate related digital resources for teaching purposes.

Description of Methods and Technologies
Data Integration and Search

The project will enable AustLit users to seamlessly search across a small number of relevant databases and archives to retrieve reliable information on a particular author, topic or publication. The envisaged service will be a federated search interface (available through the AustLit portal) that enables searching across a number of databases relevant to Australian literature, such as:

• SETIS: Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service
• Libraries Australia National Bibliographic Database (NBD)
• Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts (RAAM)
• Australian Dictionary of Biography Online
• Dictionary of Australian Artists Online
• Australian Digital Theses DB
• People Australia
• Picture Australia
• PANDORA
• AusStage

Empirical Reporting Services

AustLit researchers increasingly want to enter queries that combine text search with empirical analysis to generate graphical reports. For example:

"Show me how many articles contain the phrase 'tyranny of distance' between 1966 and 2000"

Collaborative Annotation Scheme

The Aus-e-Lit annotation services will enable communities of experts to collaboratively select, tag and annotate digital resources with:

• keywords
• notes
• comments
• interpretations
• queries
• links to related resources etc.

and to share these annotations with the research community to enrich the collection and enhance discovery services.

Compound Object Authoring and Publishing

OAI-ORE objects relate multiple resources from disparate databases within a single compound object. They are useful for modelling provenance of literary resources and for online learning objects for teaching and research. The Aus-e-Lit project will will enable AustLit community members to create / author OAI-ORE compliant Compound Objects, publish them, edit them and search and retrieve them.

Aus-e-Lit Blog

• NINES
• Electronic Knowledge Sites and Hyper Nietzsche
• PynchonWiki
• Scholarly Editing and Digital Editions
• SETIS: Sydney Electronic Text and Image Service