Journeys in Time: ALL Project

The ALL Project

The ALL Project ceased as a joint initiative between Macquarie University and the State Library of NSW in 2002. However the legacy of this partnership has continued; for although the other modules of the ALL Project ceased to be publicly available after this date, the Journeys in Time website has continued to be maintained at Macquarie University Library -- and it has expanded in the succeeding years.

The relevance and importance of the Macquarie journals as primary source materials in the study of early Australian colonial history - and the need for historical research into the significance of these documents - has always remained a concern of staff at Macquarie University Library. And the outcome of this conviction has resulted not only in the provision of ongoing public access to these transcripts and research notes, but more importantly, to the broadening of the content to include the wider corpus of documents written by Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie before and after the period of his governorship of NSW (1810-1821).

In 2005, with the agreement and support of the State Library of NSW, and the establishment of an additional partnership with State Records NSW, a new website entitled The Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive (LEMA) has been created:

www.library.mq.edu.au/digital/lema

Transcripts of Macquarie writings have been progressively added to the website -- with the aim of making available transcripts of journal entries and letters extending from as early as 1787 and extending until the death of Elizabeth Macquarie in 1835. Research notes and descriptive content are also under preparation, and these are added wherever possible.

Additional partnerships with institutions with holdings of Macquarie materials, both in Australia and in the United Kingdom, are currently being explored and negotiated in an attempt to create as broad and content-rich a research base as possible for the LEMA Project. Other partners currently include the Historic Houses Trust of NSW and the National Library of Scotland.