The AIATSIS Indigenous Australian Languages Collection includes published and unpublished material across a range of formats such as print, manuscript, audio and audio visual, posters, maps, serials and born digital. These include genres such as grammatical descriptions and dictionaries, transcriptions of spoken texts, language learning resources, vernacular literacy development, religious texts and other literature, all covering contemporary and historical works.
In 2009 a subset of this Collection, 3700 published books, were placed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. This number has since grown to over 4300 titles.
Our projects and activities aim to:
- support language maintenance and revitalisation programs
- improve understanding about our language collection
- support emerging linguists, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous
- facilitate the archiving of Indigenous languages collection items
- develop and maintain language resources and databases
- inform Government policy through current research
- deliver activities that raise the profile and status of Indigenous languages in the wider community.
Our research is conducted in partnership with other research institutions, Indigenous regional alliances, Indigenous representative and corporate bodies, communities and individuals.
