Launching Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project

1.12.21

The ASA is delighted to announce the launch of Untapped: Australian Literary Heritage Project on 6 December! 

This project aims to bring Australia’s lost literary treasures back to life by digitising the books and making them available to borrow in libraries around the country. The project includes more than 150 titles from brilliant Australian authors such as Thea Astley, Libby Gleeson, Isobelle Carmody, Jackie French, Gillian Rubinstein, Peter Goldsworthy, Carmel Bird, Garry Disher, Anita Heiss and Danielle Clode. The titles include adult and YA fiction, non-fiction and poetry, all originally published between 1926 and 2015, and will be available in ebook format to borrow from libraries and to purchase from retail platforms such as Booktopia and Amazon. 

Australian Society of Authors CEO Olivia Lanchester says, ‘This project supports Australian authors by covering the costs of digitising their older works, promoting them, and generating new licence fees. It’s a great initiative that will spotlight work from beloved Australian authors and provide new access to those works. Participating authors have commented that it is affirming and exciting to see those works back in circulation.’

Margaret Allen, CEO and State Librarian of WA, commented, ‘Libraries have always offered readers the long tail of works from much loved writers, in addition to the bestsellers and frontlist titles you will find in your local bookshop. When readers discover an author, they want to experience the full range of their writing, not just their later works, and that’s where the depth of a library collection really comes into its own’.

Untapped is led by Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin of University of Melbourne, in collaboration with the ASA, National State and Territory Libraries, the Australian Library and Information Association, and Ligature Press.

The project also involves a research component which will not only examine how authors exercise rights after reversion, but also the value of library promotion of books. By leveraging the public library network to revive these titles, the researchers aim to understand the relationship between library lending and commercial sales.

The titles included in this project may be borrowed from your local public library, or purchased via an online retailer from 6 December. 

Find out more here: https://untapped.org.au/