Research projects
The Australian Emulation Network
NSLA is a partner organisation in the Emulation as a Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) network project, which has received funding from the Australian Research Council for 2022-24. The project will establish an Australian Emulation Network to preserve and render born-digital artefacts so they are widely accessible. Targeting high-value cultural collections that require legacy computer environments, expected outcomes include stabilising and providing researchers with emulated access to born digital cultural artefacts, sharing legacy computer environments across the network, and establishing an Australian software preservation community of practice, building skills in preserving and emulating digital cultural artefacts with substantial future applications also in scientific preservation. The project is led by Professor Melanie Swalwell at Swinburne University.
Other recent ARC funded projects that NSLA has partnered in:
- Library and Information Science Research Australia (LISRA) – Aiming to encourage and enable research culture and practice within Australia’s library and information profession. (University of Southern Queensland, Charles Sturt University, ALIA, NSLA. 2016-19. Moved to Swinburne University of Technology and Deakin University in 2020.)
- E-lending Project – An evidence base of quantitative and qualitative data about how ebooks are used in libraries. (University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Monash University, RMIT, NSLA. 2016-19)
- Grey Literature Strategies – Best practice guidelines for producing and managing grey literature – reports and documents produced outside commercial publishing channels. (Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria University, the National Library of Australia, NSLA, the Australian Council for Educational Research and the Eidos Institute. 2012-15)
- Climate History Australia – Using historical records to reconstruct Australian climate over past centuries. (University of Melbourne, Australian National University, NSLA, State Library Victoria, State Library of New South Wales, National Library of Australia. 2009-12)
Current and recent projects that individual NSLA libraries are participating in as industry partners include:
- Nyingarn: making manuscript sources for Australian languages available as searchable and reusable text documents – National Library of Australia, State Library of Western Australia, State Library of New South Wales (2021 – 2024)
- The Digitisation Centre of Western Australia – State Library of Western Australia (2020)
- The Queensland Atlas of Religion – State Library of Queensland (2019-22)
- Transforming the early modern archive: the Emmerson Collection at SLV – State Library Victoria (2019-22)
- Archiving Australian media arts: Towards a method and national collection – State Library of South Australia (2019-21)
- Social histories of Holden in Australia – National Library of Australia (2018-21)
- Collecting the West – State Library of Western Australia (2016-20)
- Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries – State Library Victoria, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of South Australia, National Library of Australia (2018-20).
