Nominations open for Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project

Help out-of-print Australian books reach new audiences. Nominate an eligible book for digitisation.

Australia has a rich and diverse literary heritage – but many Australian books are now out of print. This means that they are no longer available to buy or borrow.

Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project aims to make out-of-print Australian books available to readers. This collective of libraries, authors and researchers will digitise selected books, license them to public libraries for digital lending, and make them available for sale as ebooks. The project is led by Associate Professor Rebecca Giblin at Melbourne Law School.

How to nominate a book

Readers, authors and publishers of Australian books are invited to nominate a culturally important title for digitisation.

You can nominate books from a diverse range of Australian writers, from across the country, and covering different publication dates and categories.

Nominated books should:

• be out of print or otherwise eligible to have the publication rights revert to the author
• have enduring cultural value to Australia
• have an author with a connection to Australia.

Read the full conditions for nominations.

Include the following information with your nomination:

• book title
• author
• year of original publication (and any later reissues)
• publisher and imprint
• category (such as fiction, non-fiction or children's) and genre (for example crime, historical fiction or fantasy)
• reversion status, if known (that is, if out-of-print reversion has been sought or granted)
• Australian state(s) or territory with which the title or author has the strongest association
• a sentence or two about why the book is culturally important
• your name (if you are not the book’s author or the author's representative).

Send your nomination to Dr Airlie Lawson at airlie.lawson@unimelb.edu.au

Nominations close Monday 30 November 2020.