This page contains links to indexes/databases and selected websites freely searchable on the Internet. They are provided as an addition to resources available in the AIATSIS Collections. The following all contain some valuable Indigenous studies content. Some will have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content organised by relevant category such as ‘Indigenous studies’; others will include this content in broader categories, which can be searched by subject or keyword; others are exclusively Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Please note that while you can search for articles, access to the full text documents in some of these resources may be restricted to subscribers. Contact your library to obtain copies of subscription articles.
If you know of a resource that would be useful on this page, or find a broken link, please send an email to our reference desk.
Anthropology
Anthropological Index Online
The Anthropological Index to Current Periodicals in the The Anthropology Library at the British Museum (incorporating the former Royal Anthropological Institute library)
Anthropology Review Database (ARD)
ARD is an ever-growing, free, and fully searchable database of reviews covering the entire gamut of anthropological publications, including books, audiovisual materials, software & multimedia, exhibits, tourist sites, conferences, and on-line resources...Currently the database contains the signed, refereed reviews we publish ourselves, as well as links to those published in a number of online publications and sites.
Archaeology
Internet Archaeology
Internet Archaeology has been publishing on the web since 1996 and is the premier e-journal for archaeology. Internet Archaeology is an open access, independent, not-for-profit journal. It publishes quality academic content and explores the potential of electronic publication through the inclusion of video, audio, searchable data sets, full-colour images, visualisations, animations and interactive mapping. Internet Archaeology is international in scope, a true journal without borders, and all content is peer-reviewed.
A bibliography of Australian material can be found here.
Australian Archaeological Association
A linked listing of archaeology journals can be found here. You can link directly to Australian Archaeology, the Association’s journal; this site also provides information about Australian and overseas university archaeology departments, Australian and overseas museums, archaeological associations, conference and seminar programs, Indigenous organisations and other resources.
Queensland Archaeological Research (QAR)
QAR, is a refereed journal published since 1984 devoted to publishing substantive archaeological material pertaining to research in Queensland, Australia and adjacent areas. It provides an open-source archive listing of articles
Art
Australian Art Galleries.com
Australian Art Galleries.com is an art gallery and artist search engine. It lists different galleries around Australia and the artists that they represent.
National Gallery of Australia research resources:
The many resources available from this page include
- digital resources such as Artlibraries.net and the Australian art obituaries index;
- scholarly databases including Artcyclopedia, Artsjournal, Bibliography of the History of Art and many more (the green links are freely available from anywhere; the blue links are to databases that may only be accessed at the National Gallery)
- image databases
Biography
Australian Dictionary of Biography Online
The Australian Dictionary of Biography Online website is the Internet version of the ADB 's traditional print volumes. The biographical articles published in the first online edition are those found in the printed ADB : Volumes 1 to 16 in the continuing series and the Supplementary Volume. The articles are concise, authoritative accounts of the lives of significant and representative persons in Australian history. It should be noted, however, that they were written progressively from the early 1960s to the present. Therefore, some may not reflect the latest scholarship or current mores. Print publication details, including the year, accompany each article.
Dictionary of Australian Artists Online
The DAOO is an open source freely accessible scholarly e-Research tool containing biographical data about Australian artists, designers, craftspeople and curators
Education
AEI-ATSIS – Australian Education Index – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander subset
AEI-ATSIS is a bibliographic database that provides access to Australian literature in education and training relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; this resources is available through ATSIROM (see General reference section below)
VOCEDplus
A free research database that contains over 30,000 English language records, many with links to full text documents, about technical and vocational education and training with a special focus on Australia and the Asia Pacific region.
ERIC
ERIC (the Education Resource Information Centre) aims to 'embrace all education research and research in other disciplines that have implications for educational theory and practice'.
If you have a specific question, you can email at ERICRequests@ed.gov. The ERIC help desk is happy to provide general search assistance, tips for using the ERIC website, and to answer any questions that users have about ERIC. However, they are unable to provide assistance outside of the scope of ERIC and are unable to provide reference services.
Tuckerbag Classroom Resources Database: Indigenous Perspectives in the Classroom
An Australian Curriculum resource produced by the Koorie Heritage Trust.
Film
Australian Centre for the Moving Image online catalogue
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is a state-of-the-art Centre for the public exhibition, display and preservation of Australian and international screen content in all its forms. It houses a vast collection of moving images materials – film, tape and disc, media art, games, television, digital culture and ephemera. The collection can be accessed on-site at the Australian Mediatheque
BONZA National cinema and television database
BONZA is an online collection of national cinema databases (Australian, New Zealand and French, at March 2015), comprising biographical, bibliographical, production, company and film theatre datasets.
National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)
There are many ways to access the national audiovisual collections, including online, at NFSA headquarters in Canberra and through national access centres, where you can search the collections, listen to or view items, request copies or borrow films for screening.
The Indigenous collection holds moving image and sound recordings depicting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures over the past 110 years, a priceless link to the past. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been the subject of recordings since the earliest days of moving image. The Indigenous collection spans a century’s worth of audiovisual technology, from nitrate film and wax cylinders to digital formats and contains feature films, documentaries, commercial and community television, ethnographic recordings, and home movies.
There are Indigenous titles throughout the Film Australia collections, particularly among the documentaries
General reference
ATSIROM
AIATSIS has a subscription to eleven Informit Australian databases complied as ATSIROM. ATSIROM provides access to a wide range of writing on Indigenous studies including journal articles, books, theses etc. Free access is ONLY available to visitors to the Library. These databases should also be available at most university and state libraries:
- AEI-ATSIS - Australian Education Index – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset
- AGIS-ATSIS - Attorney-General's Information Service – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset
- AHB-ATSIS - Australian Heritage Bibliography – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset
- AIATSIS - Indigenous Studies Bibliography
- APAIS-ATSIS - Australian Public Affairs Information Service – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset Indigenous Australia
- ATSIhealth - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography
- CINCH-ATSIS - Australian Criminology Database – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset
- FAMILY-ATSIS - Australian Family & Society Abstracts Database – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset
- FNQ - Far North Queensland Collection
- Indigenous Australia - The Indigenous Australia database represents the collections of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Library
- MAIS-ATSIS - Multicultural Australia and Immigration Studies – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset.
JURN
Open access to articles in arts, history, humanities, business, ecology, science and biomedical subjects. To make best use of this resource, check the tips for searching on the ‘How to use’ page (link at the bottom of the front screen).
PLOS | ONE
PLOS | ONE is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication. PLOS ONE welcomes reports on primary research from any scientific discipline.
Productivity Commission
Entering ‘Indigenous’ in the search field at the top of the first screen will return a list of all Productivity Commission publications relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The ‘Indigenous’ tab at the right of the screen enables publication searching according to category.
Health
Australian Aboriginal Health Infonet
The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet aims to inform practice and policy in Indigenous health by making research and other knowledge readily accessible.
Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia's health and welfare. AIHW collect and report information on a wide range of topics and issues, ranging from health and welfare expenditure, hospitals, disease and injury, and mental health, to ageing, homelessness, disability and child protection. Subjects include Indigenous Australians
The Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing also hosts the Close the Gap Clearinghouse
PubMed
Supported by the US National Library of Medicine National institutes of Health, PubMed comprises citations and some full text content for biomedical literature.
Lit.search
Available from the Lowitja Institute website, provides easy access to topics about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in PubMed
PsychINFO
PsychINFO is hosted by the American Psychological Association and is an abstracting and indexing database holding records about literature in the behavioural sciences and mental health. The website includes a guide to obtaining full text articles when they are freely available.
Women’s Health Clearinghouse
Supported by Women’s Health Victoria, the Clearinghouse identifies, collects and provides access to published women’s health information, specializing in health policy, health promotions, preventative health, health determinants and advocacy in the Australian and Victorian context.
Knowledge Circle; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child and Family Resources Portal
The Australian Institute of Family Studies Knowledge Circle aims to provide professionals working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families with evidence-based information, resources and interactive support.
Heritage
Australian Heritage Database
The Australian Heritage Database contains information about more than 20,000 natural, historic and Indigenous places. The database includes: places in the World Heritage List; places in the National Heritage List; places in the Commonwealth Heritage list; places in the Register of the National Estate; places in the List of Overseas Places of Historic Significance to Australia; and places under consideration, or that may have been considered for, any one of these lists.
Australian Heritage Directory
This site is a directory to Australian heritage resources available on the internet. It includes searchable databases (such as the Australian Heritage Places Inventory) and lists of the national and state heritage registers. It also includes links to funding, relevant legislation, government and non-government agencies and other key resources.
International Joint Management Bibliography
This bibliography includes a thematic reference list of literature on the subject of evaluating co-management as well as a list of general literature on co-management (i.e. not country or region specific). The remainder of the bibliography focuses on significant regions which were identified as important contributors to the debate on co-management: Africa, the Asian-Pacific, North America, Latin America and New Zealand.
Native title and Indigenous cultural heritage management bibliography
This bibliography aims to provide readers with a comprehensive list of relevant legislation, research and commentary on Indigenous cultural heritage management in Australia since the implementation of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).
Journals and publications
Australian Journals Online
AJOL is the National Library of Australia's database of Australian electronic journals, magazines, webzines, newsletters and e-mail fanzines. The database provides full details and access to over 1700 titles that include local and overseas works with Australian content, authorship and/or emphasis as well as entries for sites which advertise or promote Australian journals.
Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research
The Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) focusses on social science research in Indigenous economic and social policy from a national perspective. CAEPR aims to undertake social science research on Indigenous policy and development that is excellent by the best international and disciplinary standards and that informs intellectual understanding, public debate, policy formation and community action.
Ingentaconnect
Access to over 27,000 publications, fax delivered, or links to the option to purchase full-text articles of over 6,000 publications from over 260 academic and professional publishers.
DOAJ : Directory of Open Access Journals
This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 1220 journals in the directory. Currently 320 journals are searchable on article level.
Language
Aboriginal Languages of Australia
This Virtual Library catalogue was founded in January 1996. It currently has annotated links to 332 resources for 100 languages. About 43% of these resources are produced, published by, or directly represent the voices of Indigenous people.
AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal and language database
This reference database should help find a tribe or language using any of the alternative names and spellings in use across time and disciplines. The site includes information about the Western Desert land tenure and kinship project; and a search engine for websites related to culture, directories, archaeology, linguistics, sociology, institutions and people. Other resources on the site, eg to research are somewhat dated.
AUSTLANG
AUSTLANG provides information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. The core of AUSTLANG is a database which assembles information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages from a number of sources.
Australian Indigenous Language material in National Library of Australia Manuscript Collections
Early vocabularies in New South Wales
Guide to Aboriginal languages in the Northern Territory
Language maps
Both of these maps are interactive – you can zoom into areas of interest to see greater detail.
Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages
This State Library of Queensland site has links to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, language centres and language resources in Queensland. It includes word lists, regional lists of languages and Queensland language contacts.
Our languages
Language maps and lists, language centres and electronic resources for the whole of Australia.
OZBIB
OZBIB is a bibliography of published works and theses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.
South Australian Aboriginal languages
The ‘Aboriginal languages’ tab at the top of this page contains links to the State Library of South Australia’s holdings in Adnyamathana, Arabana, Kaurna, Narungga, Ngarrindjeri and Pitjantjatjara/Ngaanyatjarra/ Yankunyatjatjara, the main Aboriginal languages in what is now South Australia.
The rest of the page provides links to information about other South Australian Aboriginal languages and more general language information.
Victorian Aboriginal languages
Law
Agreements, treaties and negotiated settlements project
ATNS provides access to detailed information relating to agreements, treaties and negotiated settlements. The database is an online gateway to a wealth of information relating to agreements between indigenous people and others in Australia and overseas. It includes background information on each agreement; links to related agreements, organisations, signatories and events; a glossary of relevant terminology as well as direct access to published and on-line resources.
Arts Law Centre of Australia Info Hub
Legal topics in the Info Hub include Indigenous and Cultural Intellectual Property.
This site also includes Artists in the Black, a legal advice resource for artists.
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)
AustLII provides free access to Australasian public legal materials:
- primary legal materials (legislation, treaties and decisions of courts and tribunals)
- secondary legal materials created by public bodies for purposes of public access (law reform and royal commission reports for example) and
- a substantial collection of law journals.
AustLII also provides links to cases and legislation across all Australian jurisdictions and New Zealand; and to a large range of law libraries.
Australian Institute of Criminology
The AIC is Australia’s nation research and knowledge centre on crime and justice, conducting evidence-based research to inform policy and practice.
ComLaw (Commonwealth Law)
ComLaw has the most complete and up-to-date collection of Commonwealth legislation and includes notices from the Commonwealth Government Notices Gazette from 1 October 2012. As new, up-to-date compilations are added to ComLaw and the FRLI, the previous compilations are retained as Historical Data. If you want to see an item of legislation as it looked at a particular date, the historical data is the place to look. The historical data also includes legislation of the Commonwealth that is no longer in force.
Key internet links on law
The page provides links to law related resources on the web. Include a link to background and analysis on Commonwealth of Australia bills
Literature
OZLIT: Australian Literature Resources on the Net
To promote Australian books, writing and writers not only in Australia but across the world via the world-wide resources of Internet. We hope to foster, through Australian Literature, a better understanding of Australia and its diversity of people, both within Australia and Overseas.
BlackWords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers
BlackWords is a wide-ranging, inclusive and informative discovery resource of structured information relating to the lives and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers.
Maps and gazetteers
Gazetteers of Australia and selected countries
This list of gazetteers was prepared for both on-site and off-site users. It identifies material held in the National Library Map Section and provides links to gazetteers available on the internet.
Geoscience Australia
This website includes the Gazetteer of Australia which is a compilation of geographic names of Australia provided by members of the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping. It also includes the Place Name Search
Music
MusicAustralia
The MusicAustralia Pilot is the first in a series of planned development stages for the full MusicAustralia service, and has been jointly developed by the National Library of Australia and ScreenSound Australia , in cooperation with the Australian Music Centre and the Australia Council for the Arts. The aim of the pilot is to test the requirements for a resource discovery service to deliver digital music objects across different formats, organisations and sectors from a single web interface. The MusicAustralia Pilot provides access to more than 170 items of digitised music material, including published music, manuscript scores, audio recordings, multimedia presentations and other music resources which are available online.
NFRAM - National Networked Facility for Research in Australian Music
The National Networked Facility for Research in Australian Music aims to make more accessible the scattered and often hidden materials and resources related to Australian music.
Newspapers
Digitised Australian Newspapers
Digitised Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954; and the Australian Women’s Weekly to 1982.
Guide to Australian Newspapers
Listing of Australian Newspaper sites on the Internet providing full or partial content. Browse by title or state.
State Library of Victoria newspaper finding aids
This guide identifies a range of indexes available at the State Library of Victoria and to collections held elsewhere.
INFOKOORI
INFOKOORI is an index to the Koori Mail, a national fortnightly newspaper published in Lismore, NSW, that focuses on the Indigenous people of Australia, from May 1991 to date. It is also an index to biographical information from various magazines including: Our Aim (1907–1961), Dawn (1952–1969), New Dawn (1970–1975) and Identity (1971–1982).
Sydney Morning Herald Index 1988+ (InfoQuick)
INFOQUICK provides a comprehensive index to articles about Australia and Australians, published in the Sydney Morning Herald and associated publications: Sun Herald, Eastern Herald, Northern Herald and Good Weekend from 1988 onwards.
Performance
Australia Dancing
This website has been archived in Pandora, http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/35285/20120626-0000/www.australiadancing.org/index.html The database provided access to both current and historical information about dance in Australia . The directory of resources describes dance research materials held by the National Library of Australia, ScreenSound Australia , the National Screen and Sound Archive, and other selected institutions.
Individual pages from Australia Dancing can also be found in Trove.
AusStage
AusStage provides an accessible online resource for researching live performance in Australia. Development is led by a consortium of universities, government agencies, industry organisations and collecting institutions with funding from the Australian Research Council and other sources.
An event database of Australian live performance, AusStage records information about performances in six main ways: events; venues; contributors; organisations; resources; works. The database can also be searched by subject: for example, there are over 700 entries about Indigenous performances, dating from 1818.
Photographs and images
Trove: Australia in Pictures
Through this single access point, it is possible to search the image collections of many significant cultural institutions. If you want to obtain a copy of an image, a link enables you to make a request to the holding institution.
UNESCO/IFLA Directory of Digitised Collections
This site aims to catalogue major digitised heritage collections and on-going international digitisation projects. From the main page, users can conduct a keyword search or browse the database by new or all records. Entries for collections include country, collection name, URL for the collection and institution, a description of varying length, type of material, and language.
Science
Australian Biological Resources Study
The Australian Biological Resources Study provides online delivery of taxonomic and biological information on species known to occur in Australia.
Encyclopedia of Australian Science
The Encyclopedia of Australian Science is a register of the people and the many industries, corporations, research institutions, scientific societies and other organisations that have contributed to Australia's scientific, technological and medical heritage, with references to their archival materials and a bibliography of their historical published literature
Statistics
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
The ABS provides a comprehensive statistical service relevant to Australia. This service provides timely, accurate and objective statistics for use by government, industry and the community. ABS statistics can be found under the following themes: economy, environment and energy, industry, people and regional. Examples include:
Australia Now - A Statistical Profile (ABS)
A comprehensive overview of the economic and social conditions of contemporary Australia , together with their administrative and legislative background. It also describes Australia 's government, international relations, defence, geography and climate. Its pages provide sufficient background information to establish a context for the statistics and to help in understanding and interpreting them. Many of the statistics are derived from the ABS, the official statistical agency. However, a great deal of the information is also contributed by other, mainly government organisations. The official nature of the contributors to these pages ensures a high degree of objectivity and reliability in the picture presented of contemporary Australia.
Theses
Australian Digital Theses
Currently Trove includes the details of more than 300,000 theses submitted in, or relating to, Australia. As well as finding theses through Trove’s search interface, you can extract metadata about them through the Trove API. You can use this metadata to analyse research trends in Australia, or create your own thesis discovery tool.
Australian Education Research Theses Database
A database of higher degrees theses accepted at Australian universities and colleges in the area of education. It contains over 10,200 records for theses dated from 1919. Records for years from 1978 contain abstracts. A subset of the Australian Education Index, available through ATSIROM see General reference section above).