Australian Indigenous Languages Collection

The Australian Indigenous Languages Collection was established early in 1981 to bring together printed material written in Australian Indigenous languages. As of August 2010 It contains over 3,800 titles in 200 languages.

The Collection, arranged by language, comprises the output of literacy centres where bilingual education programs exist, traditional and original stories, Bible translations, and factual and topical information on health, science, history, and other subjects.

It is the aim of the Library for the Collection to become a comprehensive collection of works written in all Australian Indigenous languages. The Library welcomes donations of materials and information about new publications.

As well as published materials, the Library holds manuscripts and other materials of linguistic interest. Researchers, particularly Institute grantees, deposit field notebooks and elicited language texts, songs and word lists.

Clients can access details of items in the Language Collection using specific language names or by searching on particular Language as a 'location' in Mura, our catalogue. You may also wish to download any of our language bibliographies. Please note these lists include only print materials from the Library; no audiovisual materials from our collections are included.

languages collection

A selection from the Australian Languages collection.
Photo: AIATSIS

Our Language Thesaurus is a recommended entry point for searching for all types of language materials in AIATSIS collections.

To do this, select "Language collection" from the 'item type' box at the bottom of the search screen.

Other search terms include:

See the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia (Local call no. REF 03 ENC) for a good overview of Languages, Language Centres, Language Change and Language Classification.

UNESCO Memory of the world certificate

The Australian Indigenous Languages Collection was accepted onto the
Australian Memory of the World register in 2009.
Photo: AIATSIS