Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands

Our collection for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands is an expansion of our Southeast Asia collections. Papua New Guinea, Marianas Islands, and Fiji receive particular attention within our overall basic collection for all of the islands. 

Strengths includes literature, history, biography, anthropology, politics, literature, and languages in the Pacific. The collection covers indigenous languages of the Pacific Islands and aboriginal languages of Australia and New Zealand. We also acquire dictionaries and teaching materials for the languages collected.

The collection has evolved over time in responses to hiring and interests in the departments of History and American Culture, notably the expansion into New Zealand and adding materials about the Maori.

Since archival materials are difficult to collect, we are a member of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PAMBU) — the only one on the East coast of the United States — which gives us access to all of the Pacific Islands manuscripts through microfilms and digital formatting. We also specifically curate and catalog pertinent publications from the Australian National University (ANU) Open Access.

History of the collection

Growth of collections in this area began in the 1980s when the Australian government deposited a number of titles to the library.