AustLit

Celebrating AustLit’s 25^th birthday with information trails on key topics across the year.

In 2026, we are proud to celebrate 25 years since AustLit first launched as a web-accessible database in 2001, the only national bibliography on this scale anywhere in the world.

Home to bibliographical records for over one million works and 200,000 agents—all of which have been entered by hand by AustLit indexers—AustLit’s comprehensiveness, reliability and longevity are worth celebrating.

For this momentous anniversary, we have a year’s worth of celebrations planned, from in-person and online events to project highlights, video guides, and in this space, information trails.

What is an information trail? Trails on AustLit are curated and themed collections of related works, gathered together for you to explore. You might be familiar with our BlackWords trails (link) or with the Necessary Conversations (link).

In 2026, we’ll be releasing trails across the year: twenty-five trails for twenty-five years. Curious about Australian film? In love with romance? Seeking literary scandals? Fascinated by picture books? Wondering what Australian authors say about techno-futures? Look no further!

These information trails are NOT ‘best of’ lists! Rather, they celebrate the depth and diversity of Australian literature and story-telling and showcase some of the incredible information housed within AustLit. These lists have been compiled by interns, volunteers, and former staff members, as well as the AustLit team, bringing a diversity of perspectives to the diversity of information available in the database.

Our 2026 information trails will mark key dates and events, but some simply explore the one million works we’ve recorded on the database over the past quarter of a century.

Interested in what we’ll be posting and when? Download a PDF of our social media calendar (also shown below) to follow along!