Pixels & Partnerships: digital publishing and co-operative scholarship in Australian and British imperial history

The efforts of libraries and archival institutions in collecting and curating dispersed collections of original letters, journals, pictorial sources, and realia/artefacts are essential contributions towards research and scholarship. Recent technological advances in digitization offer important new possibilities in the reproduction of documents and images as well as enhanced access to dispersed institutional holdings. The Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive (LEMA) is a co-operative inter-institutional website project based at Macquarie University Library, in partnership with key Australian and UK institutions. The aim of the LEMA Project is to create a digital research gateway to the writings of the Lachlan Macquarie (1761-1824), governor of New South Wales from 1810-1821 and his wife Elizabeth (1778-1835), and thereby assist in the study and analysis of their place in Australian and imperial history. The LEMA framework is designed to explore the personal and global contexts of the Macquaries through the use of full-text transcriptions of documentary sources, as well as contributing towards the identification and digital repatriation of personal objects associated with their lives. Pixels & Partnerships will discuss the history and infrastructure of the LEMA Project and examine how inter-institutional partnerships can be developed through reciprocity and resource sharing. It will assess the sustainability of such projects and discuss the viability and application of recent technologies in the development of digital research projects.