Initially led by UNSW at ADFA, leadership of the consortium transferred to the University of Queensland in 2002.

[1] The first dataset comprised around 300,000 biographical and bibliographical records, including indexes to magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals.

[3] For example, in 2008, the ARC provided A$500,000 for a project to complete the retrospective record of Australian book history, establish a new resource for historical research on children's literature, and further develop the database of Indigenous Australian writers and story tellers (see BlackWords below).

[6][7] AustLit was the first large-scale implementation of the FRBR Model (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records).

[1] AustLit publishes biographical entries and brief essays on Australian writers, critics and storytellers, organisational histories relating to publishers, theatre companies and other arts organisations, arts and other cultural festivals, national and international awards, as well as works of fiction and criticism.

[3] BlackWords, a separately published database within AustLit, covers all aspects of Indigenous Australian literature.

[11][12][13][14] It also provides access to full-text material hosted by other platforms, including Trove, libraries, public digitisation projects, and electronically published works.

Added to AustLit in 2000, it continues to grow and Flinders University is primarily responsible for its development.

Over time, some inclusion criteria have widened:[6] AustLit is a key information resource for the study of Australian literature and related fields.