Resources and services for Librarians & Information Professionals

One of our aims is to develop, maintain and preserve well-documented archives and collections. Our cataloguing and indexing policies show how we are working to achieve the best possible value-added documentation. We provide monthly lists of new titles added to Mura®, the AIATSIS catalogue by email and on the web.

We aim to improve access to information by using systems which describe items by their geographic, language and cultural identifiers. Our cataloguers use the AIATSIS Pathways thesaurus to describe all items held in the AIATSIS Catalogue. The thesaurus contains headings for place names, language groups and people, and subjects relating to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. Other libraries are welcome use our thesaurus and it is available for downloading in PDF and RTF. The Library of Congress has approved our thesaurus for use in bibliographic records.

The Talkin Names tutorial is a practical example of implementing the ATSILIRN protocols. This tutorial is designed as an introduction to concepts and practices used by cataloguers working with Indigenous content, showing best practice for establishing headings for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander names. The Connecting to Country : Australian place names tutorial gives an introduction to best practice for establishing headings for Australian place names.

At AIATSIS we are committed to providing information in a culturally respectful and appropriate way. If you need help with research or you have a reference question our reference librarians will assist you. An Inter-Library Loan and Document Supply service are available. The Library is open to the public and tours can be arranged for interested groups.

Audiovisual Access Unit staff can also assist you with enquiries relating to photographs, film and sound materials.

Our Native Title Research and Access Officer provides advice and access assistance to native title clients on the holdings of the Library and Audiovisual Archives.

Our records can also be found in Trove. This is an online search engine developed by the National Library of Australia. You can also find our records on Informit’s index, The Indigenous Studies Bibliography (AIATSIS). This is a bibliographic database that indexes published and unpublished material on Australian Indigenous studies.