

Arising from research at the University of Melbourne, it now includes representatives (the author of this article among them) from state, territory and public libraries. Untapped is a unique collaborative project between academics, libraries and authors. Others are by important authors from across the twentieth century, such as Kylie Tennant, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Martin Boyd. The collection includes titles published as recently as 2011, such as There Should Be More Dancing, by Rosalie Ham, author of the popular novel The Dressmaker, and titles as significant as Thea Astley’s Miles Franklin Award-winning novels The Well-dressed Explorer (1962) and The Acolyte (1972). You may be surprised to hear that some of the selected books were out of print at all. While some devoted readers are used to scouring second-hand bookshops and websites, and some publishers have launched programs that make out-of-print titles available once more, most notably Text Classics, Untapped does so systematically and at scale.

Authors - or their estates - earn royalties on library loans and sales, creating new income streams from books that were languishing out of print. These can be borrowed through Australian public libraries and are for sale through ebook retailers. Untapped, the Australian Literary Heritage Project, is working to make books available to readers once more by selecting and digitising over 150 culturally important titles - fiction and non-fiction, poetry, plays, children’s fiction and speculative fiction. Too much of Australia’s literary heritage has been lost. Have you ever searched for a particular book, perhaps one published in the twentieth century by a well-known Australian author, only to find that it’s out of print? A new project brings out-of-print books back to life.
