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]