The Australian Common Reader was initially funded by an Australian Research Council grant and established by Tim Dolin at Curtin University in 2008. Since 2014, it has been managed by Julieanne Lamond at the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at Australian National University, in collaboration with the ANU Centre for Digital Humanities Research. It is now one of a number of online resources for the history of reading, including What Middletown Read and the Reading Experience Database.

Libraries

The database contains circulation records from the following libraries:

· Collie Mechanics' Institute was built in 1901, the year the coalmining and logging town in the south-west of WA was declared a municipality. The library records are held in the Battye Library, State Library of Victoria, in Perth (2917A/10). The database includes records from 1908-1909.

· Lambton Mechanics' and Miners' Institute in Elder St, Lambton (a suburb of Newcastle, NSW), was founded in 1864. The records, and a selection of the books, are held in the University of Newcastle Archives in Callaghan, NSW, 2308. The database includes records from 1903-1928.

· The Maitland Institute, in the wheat farming township on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, was established in 1880. The records are held in the State Records of SA Gepps Cross Repository in Adelaide. The database holds records from 1908-1911.

· Port Germein Institute was founded in 1892 in the South Australian town famous for the long jetty which serviced the wheat export trade from the region. The records are held in the State Records of SA Gepps Cross Repository in Adelaide. The database holds records from 1892-1908.

· Rosedale Mechanics' Institute is in the pastoral and agricultural town of Rosedale, on the Latrobe River in south Gippsland, Victoria. The Institute records are held in the manuscripts collection of the State Library of Victoria (MS 9860). The database holds records from 1905-1908 and 1911-1912.

· The South Australian Institute was established in Adelaide in 1856. Loan records in ACR date from 1861-2. The records are held in the State Records of SA Gepps Cross Repository in Adelaide. The database holds records from 1861-1862.

For more information about the libraries in the database, and their borrowing habits, see:

· Tim Dolin, ‘First Steps Toward a History of the Mid-Victorian Novel in Colonial Australia’, Australian Literary Studies 22.3 (May 2006): 273-293.

· Tim Dolin, ‘The Secret Reading Life of Us. Readers, Writers, Publishers: Essays and Poems, edited by Brian Matthews, 2004, pp. 115-34.

· Julieanne Lamond, ‘Zones of Connection: Common Reading in a Regional Australian Library.” Print Culture Histories Beyond the Metropolis, edited by James Connolly et all, University of Toronto Press, 2016, pp. 355-374.

Acknowledgements:

The Australian Common Reader database was built by Jason Ensor. Data was collected and entered into the database by Richard Myers, Sian Supski, Lucy Dougan, Tim Dolin, Gerard Hayes, and Michelle Burns. The current search interface and website was built by Junran Lei at the Centre for Digital Humanities Research, Australian National University.