Linked Archives: a Digital Approach to Visualising Historical Literary Networks

'Linked Archives' is a digital tool developed to harness the untapped potential of large manuscript collections. Using structured metadata based on Linked Open Data standards, the tool facilitates a range of research techniques relating to documentary evidence and international correspondence networks. Originally designed to describe the business archive of Australian publisher Angus & Robertson, it is particularly suited to studies of transnational literary and publishing operations (such as connections between Australia and New Zealand in the early twentieth century). This paper will explore how ‘Linked Archives’ can contribute to a critical investigation of literary archives and the stories they tell—or, if possible, the stories that were obscured or not told as the result of these processes.