Linked digital archives and the historical publishing world: An Australasian perspective

The ARCHIVER project (Angus & Robertson Collection for Humanities and Education Research), based at Western Sydney University, is developing a model for curating digitally accessible versions of print-based manuscript collections that has the potential to transform humanities research. Using structured, linked metadata concepts, "Linked Archives" allows archival collections to be connected in new ways and facilitates complex meta-analyses of associated data between and across these collections to achieve results that would be impossible using traditional methods alone. Our current dataset consists of the records of key Australasian publishing companies from the 20th century. This paper will demonstrate the potential of this approach, when applied to this dataset, for examining the underlying infrastructure and networks of the book trade, and thus the creation of literary culture in Australasia and beyond.