I made a very pleasing discovery today when I stumbled across the Teaching Aust.Lit website. Launched late last year, it’s a fantastic resource for secondary and tertiary teachers of Australian literature and also for undergraduate students seeking course information. It shows that across Australia, OzLit is being widely taught:
The TAL Resource compiles data about Australian literature teaching organised by institution, course, unit, and texts studied. This data is available through a searchable web interface so that users can quickly find information about where and in what context Australian literary texts are taught and the types of assessment undertaken, providing links to relevant university websites in schools and departments at universities around the country.
The TAL Resource is fully interoperable with the AustLit database so that biographical, bibliographical and contextual information on Australian literary cultures is easily accessible to teachers and students. (About Teaching Aust.Lit)
This is an exciting initiative that deserves support!
Great – and encouraging – site Lisa. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. But of course you have to be a subscriber to Aust Lit to access the rest and Aust Lit is very expensive. Do most schools have access to it? I suppose they do?
By: whisperinggums on January 21, 2010
at 9:11 am
Someone told me there is some kind of deal where people with a legitimate scholarly interest (which includes schools, I think) can apply for access to Aust Lit, but it all seemed too hard to me. I don’t mind paying for a good article on line, but I don’t want to have to mess about, and I certainly don’t want to subscribe when I’m only interested in a limited number of articles. In a perfect world there would be a simple click through to PayPal and I could part with a dollar or so to read whatever it was that I was interested in.
By: Lisa Hill on January 21, 2010
at 5:36 pm
I guess that’s not going to work for we poor individuals at home. I currently have access as a casual staff member of CSU so that’s ok, and I can get it at various libraries but that’s not wonderfully convenient. I concur wholeheartedly with you about pay per article via PayPal – so tedious having to pop up to get the credit card. (I’m embarrassed by my laziness).
And, I’ve had a little email communication with the good people at TAL today. They’ve got It’s raining in Mango classified as Short Story. When I pointed out that was wrong, they said oh, yes you’re right, there’s confusion, it’s part of a collection of short stories called It’s raining in Mango: Pictures from the family album and that’s what the course is teaching so we’ll fix it. I replied that no, it’s not a collection, but a novel that has a section/chapter called It’s raining in Mango. I haven’t heard back, and it’s not fixed yet! The thing is it can look like short stories but you read it as a novel, and all the reviewers etc call it a novel not a short story collection…unless current critics have decided it’s short stories? I’m waiting with bated breath.
By: whisperinggums on January 21, 2010
at 6:03 pm
Well, they do say somewhere on the site that they invite feedback, and in fact rely on it to make it work… Lisa
By: Lisa Hill on January 21, 2010
at 9:48 pm