Untapped The Australian Literary Heritage Project Stage 2

The project aims to investigate the economic value of Australia’s vast out-of-print literary heritage and libraries’ work promoting books. It expects to digitize 175 culturally important books and license them to public libraries for elending, then use interdisciplinary econo-legal approaches to interrogate the effects. Expected outcomes include new economic models (around the relationships between ebook loans and sales and the value of library promotion) and recommendations for designing copyright rights in ways that better support authors and access. Expected benefits include improved access to classic Australian books, new revenue for writers, and infrastructure to enable the ongoing addition of out-of-print books to library collections.