Marie-Louise Ayres | |
---|---|
Born | 1963
Perth, Western Australia |
Nationality | Australian |
Education | |
Occupation(s) | Director-General of the
National Library of Australia (2017-present) |
Marie-Louise Ayres is a librarian 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.
Marie-Louise Ayres was born in 1963 in Perth Western Australia, and moved with her family to Canberra in 1967. [1] [2] She attended St Clare's College and Stirling College. [2]
Ayres earned her bachelor degree from the University of New England. [3] She received a doctorate in 1994 from the Australian National University, writing her thesis on Australian women poets Dorothy Auchterlonie, Rosemary Dobson, Dorothy Hewett, and J.S. Harry. [1]
In 1994 she became the curator of the Australian Defence Force Academy's collection of Australian literary manuscripts. [1] 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. [3] [1]
Ayres began working at the National Library of Australia in 2002 as a project manager for Music Australia, a discovery service for access to music resources. [3] She became curator of the library's manuscript division in 2006 and became head of the resource sharing division in 2011. [3] Her position as the Assistant Director-General included managing Trove, a search engine which aggregates resources from cultural institutions across Australia. [1] [3]
In March 2017 Ayres succeeded Anne-Marie Schwirtlich as Director-General of the National Library of Australia, being appointed for a five-year term. [3] [4]
Her work continues to focus on providing access to the cultural history of Australia and addressing the challenges of preserving born-digital content. [5]
Believing in the importance of the legal deposit system as a way to capture the country's identity, Ayres has presided over the building phase and launch of NED, the National edeposit service whereby publishers submit their digital publications directly via a website to fulfill their legal deposit obligations. [6] The nationwide service went live on 30 May 2019, [7] [8] and was formally launched by the Arts Minister Paul Fletcher, on 16 August 2019. [7] [9] [10]