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RMIT Publishing presents the digitised Meanjin archive as the journal celebrates 70 iconic years
13 November 2009
RMIT Publishing is delighted to welcome Meanjin, one of Australia’s most established and highly acclaimed literary journals, to its Informit service following a major digitisation project. As the journal enters its 70th year, there can be no better way to mark its next era than by bringing together the journal’s backfiles into one online archive, making its content accessible for a new generation.
An iconic literary journal with a deep archive of influential and prestigious writing, Meanjin has come to represent Australia’s cultural memory. Over seven decades, its contributors have provided a critical and reflective journey through contemporary Australasian literature, the arts and modern culture itself, exploring subjects as diverse as migration, suburbia, popular music and television. “There was a time when to be any great writer in Australia, you had to first be published in our most exalted literary journal. Thus, the likes of Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee, Patrick White, Frank Moorhouse and John Birmingham have all been the staples of past issues” - Samanatha Hagam, M/C Reviews.
Meanjin is published in print by Melbourne University Publishing under the wing of Editor, Sophie Cunningham. Reflecting upon Meanjin’s past achievements and future readership, Sophie comments – “we’ve come a long way from a small pamphlet produced in Brisbane in 1940 by four poets and there have been significant cultural challenges to the environment our literary journal operates in. We take nothing for granted. It is for this reason Meanjin hopes to celebrate the significance of this milestone by creating new ones and we're incredibly excited by the opportunities presented by our collaboration with RMIT Publishing. Thanks to RMIT Publishing we’ll be launching the Informit digitisation of our rich archive and making it more accessible to readers.”
Over recent months RMIT Publishing has undertaken the task of scanning, indexing and preparing Meanjin content for the web. “We have up to 8,500 articles; that’s 40,000 pages to scan in total. RMIT Publishing’s production team has worked with Melbourne University Publishing to source every available back issue. The result is a fully searchable archive which ensures the preservation and discoverability of Meanjin content for years to come.
The Meanjin backfiles (1940 – 1995) are available for purchase now, with access to content commencing from January 2010. Current content from 1996 is also digitised and included in the Informit Humanities & Social Sciences Collection. For more information contact sales@rmitpublishing.com.au or call +61 3 9925 8210.
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About RMIT Publishing
RMIT Publishing is the largest provider of authoritative content from the Asia Pacific region. A preferred partner for content providers, RMIT Publishing collaborates with publishers, government departments, research institutes and others. Through its Informit brand and online platform, RMIT Publishing provides easy access to core content and specialist research not readily available elsewhere online. Read more at www.rmitpublishing.com.au. RMIT Publishing is a business unit of RMIT Training Pty Ltd – a wholly owned subsidiary of RMIT University. Read more here.
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About Meanjin Meanjin was founded in Brisbane by Clem Christesen in 1940 (the name, pronounced Mee-an-jin, is derived from an Aboriginal word for the finger of land on which central Brisbane sits). It moved to Melbourne in 1945 at the invitation of the University of Melbourne and is currently under the editorship of Sophie Cunningham. Over the years, the journal has published some of the earliest serious discussions of subjects that have since attracted sustained attention, including migration, television, suburbia, popular music, Australia's 'cultural cringe', museums, drugs, food and travel. Today, Meanjin is committed to publishing the best new writing in Australia from both emerging and established voices. Read more here.
Media contact:
Non Jenkins
RMIT Publishing
Tel: +61 (0)3 9925 8210
Non.jenkins@rmit.edu.au