Marie-Louise Ayres is a

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...

whose work has centered on providing digital access to cultural resources throughout Australia. Since 2017 she has been the Director-General of the

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

Early life and education

Marie-Louise Ayres was born in 1963 in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

Western Australia, and moved with her family to Canberra in 1967. She attended St Clare's College and Stirling College. Ayres earned her bachelor degree from the University of New England. She received a doctorate in 1994 from the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

, writing her thesis on Australian women poets

Dorothy Auchterlonie Dorothy Auchterlonie (also known as Dorothy Green) (28 May 1915 – 21 February 1991) was an English-born Australian academic, literary critic and poet. Life Auchterlonie was born in Sunderland, County Durham in England. In 1927 when s ...

, Rosemary Dobson, Dorothy Hewett, and J.S. Harry.

Library career

In 1994 she became the curator of the Australian Defence Force Academy's collection of Australian literary manuscripts. Ayres worked there for eight years; her time there included the development of AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, a clearinghouse for information about Australia's literary and print-culture history. Ayres began working at the National Library of Australia in 2002 as a project manager for

Music Australia Music Australia is a free national online service hosted by the National Library of Australia in conjunction with over 50 cultural organisations across Australia. It was launched on 14 March 2005. It covers all types, styles and genres of Australia ...

, a discovery service for access to music resources. She became curator of the library's manuscript division in 2006 and became head of the resource sharing division in 2011. Her position as the Assistant Director-General included managing

Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...

, a search engine which aggregates resources from cultural institutions across Australia. In March 2017 Ayres succeeded

Anne-Marie Schwirtlich Anne-Marie Lucienne Schwirtlich , is an Australian librarian who was the Director-General of the National Library of Australia from 2011 to 2017. In 2015, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). Born in Bombay in India to a Fre ...

as Director-General of the National Library of Australia, being appointed for a five-year term. Upon her appointment the Arts Minister praised her work in leading the development of transformative digital services in Australia. Her work continues to focus on providing access to the cultural history of Australia and addressing the challenges of preserving

born-digital The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form.NDIIPP"Preserving Digital Culture,"Library of Congress. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital, as in the case of fil ...

content. Believing in the importance of the

legal deposit Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary reposi ...

system as a way to capture the country's identity, Ayres has presided over the building phase and launch of NED, the

National edeposit National edeposit (NED) is a collaboration between Australia's nine national, state and territory libraries which provides for the legal deposit, management, storage and preservation of, and access to, published electronic material across Aus ...

service whereby publishers submit their digital publications directly via a website to fulfill their legal deposit obligations. The nationwide service went live on 30 May 2019, and was formally launched by the Arts Minister Paul Fletcher, on 16 August 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ayres, Marie-Louise Living people 1963 births Australian librarians Australian women librarians University of New England (Australia) alumni Australian National University alumni People from Perth, Western Australia People from Canberra Directors-General of the National Library of Australia National Library of Australia Council members