AusStage: Building and sustaining links with other digital resources and repositories

AusStage, the database of Australian performing arts events, has in 2008 seen the beginning of a new phase of development: the integration of external critical resources and databases with event-related data. This paper offers a case study report of the past eighteen months' work by one component of the AusStage team. Via a live Internet connection, this presentation will reveal the new functionality of the AusStage database and discuss the proposed direction that the project will take from this point. AusStage, a freely-accessible national database of Australian performing arts built by a consortium of universities and industry partners, now contains database records on over 74,000 performing arts events, their associated venues along with the organisations and professionals involved. While the long-term goal to index and audit Australia's performing arts history continues, AusStage has now begun to implement the technology that will enable it to create and sustain links with other digital repositories. The first step of this process is to begin associating the data contained in AusStage with presently existing critical resources. The proof-of-concept work for this part of the project was undertaken in three different strands: associating critical literature in the form of books; Australasian Drama Studies articles and RealTime articles. This paper discusses the process of associating each of these different types of resources with existing digital resources to argue that the usefulness of repositories like AusStage can only benefit from increasing accessibility and connectivity with other digital collections and discourses