Pacific research guide

About the collection

The Library holds a rich and diverse range of documentary materials relating to the Pacific region, including Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and New Zealand.

Our Pacific collection features excellent holdings of books, journals, newspapers, manuscripts, maps and pictures, as well as ephemera and selected websites, from the earliest accounts of European exploration of the region to contemporary publications. See Pacific collections for a general description of the Pacific-related material held in our collections and highlights some of our treasures in this area.

This guide aims to assist researchers in identifying and using the Library’s collection and provide pathways to a variety of other resources beyond the Library’s collections.

painting of a ship in the background on the ocean and palm trees on an island in the foreground

George Gordon McCrae, [Sailing ship near Pacific island], nla.gov.au/nla.obj-139352101

George Gordon McCrae, [Sailing ship near Pacific island], nla.gov.au/nla.obj-139352101

Searching the Library's collection

The best way to explore the Library's collection is to use our online catalogue.

Painted portrait picture of Tomika te muti, a noted east coast chief

T Ryan & Horatio Gordon Robley & Brett's Christmas Annual, (1905), Tomika te mutu, a noted east coast chief, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-140438726

A simple search of the catalogue using terms such as 'Pacific', 'Pacific Islands' or the names of specific islands, regions or countries, such as 'Fiji' or 'Melanesia' or words in the title, author's name and subject terms will locate relevant collection items the Library holds.

It works better to start with a broader term then use the options at the right of the page under 'Narrow search' to sort search results. The options to help refine search results list include format, such as book, map, microform, manuscript, journal, picture, and date, subject and language. You can also limit the results to include online or digital materials only.

The catalogue also allows you to browse the collections by title, author, subject, series and Dewey number. To browse general works about the Pacific, click on the Browse alphabetically tab, choose Browse subjects then use terms such as Pacific.

With a Library login, you can request items to use in the reading rooms. If you are unable to visit the Library, you can use our Copies Direct service to order a copy of an item, subject copyright provisions, and have it sent to you via email or post.

For more information on catalogue search and our collection delivery service, see: Start researching.

Suggested resources

South Pacific Commission

Microfilm of 78 manuscripts copied by the Commission, written by missionaries, anthropologists, and linguists between 1900 and 1956 and publications produced by the Commission.

German colonies in the Pacific

Papers and microfilm of original records relating to the German colonies in the Pacific from 1884-1914.

Internet resources

These are general sites for researching the Pacific Ocean region on the Internet and provide a starting place for researchers in this field. They provide a diverse range of information on the Pacific region as well as links to other useful sites.

Digital resources

Featured collections have been formed within the Pacific and in significant education and cultural heritage institutions internationally. All collections are freely accessible via the Internet. Materials include digitised photographs, line drawings, diaries, log books, maps, nautical charts, rare books, newspapers, theses and audio recordings.

Many collections featured reflect a European experience of the Pacific: its discovery, colonisation, governance, study and wartime significance. Other collections reflect the experience of indigenous inhabitants. It is hoped that more indigenous collections can be added to this site in the future.

This guide aims to provide researchers with easy access to a variety of online primary resources existing within and beyond the Library's collections. Such resources help to build a picture of the significant events and catalysts for change which have occurred in the Pacific region in recent centuries, as well as the Pacific’s myriad of traditional and enduring cultures.

National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia's digital collections contain pictures, rare historical maps, sheet music, manuscripts belonging to famous Australians, selected printed works and audio recordings. The collection includes a number of significant Pacific materials, including Captain Cook's Endeavour Journal and early Pacific maps.

Trove

Trove is a national discovery service built and managed by the National Library of Australia. Trove is the Library's primary vehicle to assist users to access digital- and physical-format content held in over 1000 libraries, archives, museums and galleries across Australia. Trove allows searching and access to digitised collections in many of these Australian cultural institutions. It includes materials related to Australia's Pacific mining interests, wartime involvement, governance, strategic and diplomatic alliances during the 20th century as well as material about Pacific life and scenery.

Australian Joint Copying Project

The Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) is a collection of unique historical material relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, which is digitised and available through Trove. It filmed over 8 million documents dating from 1560 to 1984.

Detailed descriptions and digitised images are also accessible through online finding aids.

South Seas Project

The South Seas Project documents the history of European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific between 1760 and 1800. It features full texts of James Cook's Endeavour Journal, as well as journals kept by Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson. It also features digitised engravings and related images. Hosted by the National Library of Australia. This website is now archived and available through the Australian Web Archive.

Pacific Manuscripts Bureau

The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PAMBU) is based in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. It aims to copy and preserve documentary heritage materials from the Pacific Islands, such as archives, manuscripts and rare printed materials. Anyone with Internet access can search the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau catalogue. Many of their photographic collections can be viewed on the catalogue online from any location. PMB also developed a range of finding aids to assist researchers navigate PMB collections. The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau Database of digital collections is available through the National Library's eResources and other PAMBU member libraries.

University of Adelaide - Special Collections

The University of Adelaide has a nationally significant Pacific collection. The Library's Special Collection currently includes includes a small number of digitised Pacific materials plus the H. E. Maude Digital Archive comprising material from the original papers of Henry Maude (MSS 0003).

National Archives of Australia

The National Archives of Australia manages documents relating to the activities of prominent Australians, the judiciary and the Australian Government since federation. Its collection includes paper files, photographs, audiovisual and sound recordings, maps and other objects. Digitised materials such as those relating to Australia's wartime involvement in the Pacific and its governance of Papua New Guinea can be accessed online through its 'PhotoSearch' or 'RecordSearch' services.

Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial collections include digitised materials documenting Australia's wartime involvement in the Pacific. The Official histories: Second World War gives a retrospective narrative account of events. The Australian Army war diaries: Second World War gives first hand reports and intelligence reviews of the conflict, including accounts of activities in New Guinea and the active role played by indigenous inhabitants.

PARADISEC

The Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures is a facility for digital conservation for endangered materials from the Pacific region. Collection metadata is available via guest login and many collections are freely accessible. Of particular interest are the Arthur Capell (1902-1986) and Stephen Adolphe Wurm (1922-2001) fieldnotes collections. Capell was a linguist and ethnographer who recorded and documented Australian Aboriginal and endangered languages in the Asia-Pacific region. Wurm was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at ANU and his collection features records relating to his Solomon Islands research.

University of Wollongong

The Cochrane Papua New Guinea collection at the University of Wollongong comprises several hundred images collected by Percy and Renata Cochrane in Papua New Guinea from 1949-66. The collection comprises sound recordings, black & white photographs, colour slides, manuscripts, correspondence, publications.

National Library of New Zealand

The National Library of New Zealand's digitised collections are a gateway to numerous electronic resources and digitised collections relating to the people, history, culture and places of New Zealand. It includes the digitised Maori magazine Te Ao Hou which was published from 1952 to 1975, and the online Rangiatea exhibition which documents the history of the oldest Anglican Maori Church until it was destroyed in 1995.

  • Index New Zealand - an online index to magazine and newspaper articles held by the National Library of New Zealand, including abstracts.
  • Te Puna Search - lists titles of books and serials held in libraries throughout New Zealand.
  • Papers Past - database of historical newspapers published in New Zealand (1839-1949) and Samoa (1877-1930). Also available via Papers Past are full text magazines, letters and diaries and the NZ Parliamentary papers (which include reports from the Pacific and reports on New Zealand's Pacific territories). Hosted by the National Library of New Zealand.

University of Auckland - Digitised collections

The University of Auckland has a very strong Pacific focus and is responsible for developing and managing a number of digital collections. The Library's New Zealand and Pacific digital collections include a digitised social anthropology and archaeology photographic archive, and digitised maps.

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre is an online archive of significant New Zealand and Pacific Islands materials. It contains born-digital content as well as searchable heritage manuscripts, journals and other texts. It also includes many accompanying images such as postcards, newspaper clippings and cartoons, line-drawings and photos. The NZETC is part of the Victoria University of Wellington Library.

University of Canterbury

The University of Canterbury Library holds a large number of Pacific images that are currently in the process of being digitised. Collections online so far include the AC Graham Photographs, the Canterbury Mountaineering Club Records and Photographs and the John Macmillan Brown Collection, which feature photographs and glass plates of people, clubs and landscapes from both the 19th and 20th centuries. The Canterbury Frozen Meat Company photographs feature company images from a similarly broad period. Navigate to these collections by clicking on the search option under 'Photographs'.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

The University of Hawaii at Manoa Library's digital and digitised collections have a strong Hawaiian focus, but also feature some wider Pacific content. The Trust Territory Photos Archive contains digitised images of Micronesia from 1947-1988 when the islands were administered by the U.S. and known as the U.N.'s 'Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands'.

Hawaii State Archives

The Hawaii State Archives digital collections include digitised genealogical indexes, details of government office holders, records of land divisions, traveller details, tax ledgers and WWI service records from Hawaii.

Archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie

The Archives of New Caledonia includes a small selection of digitised photographs documenting life, scenery and developments in the colony from the mid-19th century until the 20th.

Memory of the Netherlands

The Memory of the Netherlands is a project of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. It is responsible for digitising important sources of the Netherlands' cultural heritage and offers access to 62 digital collections from 58 heritage institutions. The collection has major strengths relating to Dutch exploration of the East Indies, but also contains items relevant to the broader Pacific region such as early cartographic depictions. Hosted by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Gallica

Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It contains digitised printed and graphic materials as well as sound recordings. It is a huge repository of resources many of which relate to Pacific exploration and the colonisation of New Caledonia, Tahiti and Vanuatu.

British Library - Images Online

Images Online provides access to thousands of the images from the collections of the British Library. It includes manuscripts, rare books, musical texts, maps, illustrations, drawings, paintings and photographs. The collection includes material relating to Exploration and Maps and Landscapes and can be browsed under these terms. It features a vast array of resources documenting the increasing English presence in the Pacific from the 16th century onwards.

National Library of Scotland - Digital Gallery

The National Library of Scotland's Digital Gallery includes a small collection of materials belonging to 19th century storyteller and poet Robert Louis Stevenson. This includes digitised letters, sketches and photographs documenting his travels through the Pacific Islands.

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress collections include:

  • Prints and Photographs Online - contains many digitised Pacific photographs, maps and drawings particularly from the 19th to the mid-20th century. The World's Transportation Commission Collection features late 19th century photographs of transportation systems, life and scenery from Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific Islands.
  • Veteran's History Project - contains digitised oral histories and other materials related to first-hand accounts of US veterans in 20th century wars and conflicts. It includes accounts related to American involvement in and around the Pacific Islands during WWII.
  • Exhibitions - includes the online Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture. It features digitised manuscripts, photographs, letters, notes and publications of this early 20th century anthropologist documenting her studies in Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Bali.

United States National Archive – Digital Vaults

The U.S. National Archive's Digital Vaults contains some digitised photographs and documents relating to Hawaii and WWII Pacific involvement. It includes the 1897 Petition Against Annexation signed by more than 21,000 native Hawaiians and addressed to the U.S. President.

University of California San Diego

The UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library Collections holds over 250,000 prints, slides, negatives and digital images of people, ships, oceanographic instruments, tourist brochures, buildings, meetings, events, and marine environments and specimens. The Capricorn Expedition Photographs (1952-1953) collection includes many images of scenery, local life and people and from the Institute's expedition through Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Marshall Islands, Marquesas Islands, Cook Islands and Tahiti.

University of Washington

The University of Washington's digital collections include the Lauren Donaldson collection. It features digitised personal logs, photo albums, ephemera and papers relating to radiological surveys undertaken after atmospheric nuclear weapons testing conducted by the United States in the South Pacific between 1946 and 1964.

Topographic map of Kokoda

2/1st & Australia Army Topographical Survey Company, New Guinea Force, (1944), Kokoda, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233565814

2/1st & Australia Army Topographical Survey Company, New Guinea Force, (1944), Kokoda, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233565814

More resources

Discover items written in your language in the Library's collection with our catalogue advanced search. Click in the 'Language' field, and tick the box next to your language. If your language is not initially shown, click on 'more' and find it in the list. This type of language searching will list items across many formats as shown on the right menu, such as books, journals, music and pictures.

Some examples of resources in other languages include Marshallese, Tongan, Tok Pisin, Maori and Tuvaluan. There are many more but not all languages are represented in the collection. If you're not sure where to start, please Ask a Librarian.

Sometimes language results can overlap – this can be due to searching several language codes at once, or if multiple languages are covered by the same publication. This often occurs with dictionaries, religious titles or regional works. If your results include several languages, the menu on the right side will list these beneath the 'Language' option. Click the relevant language to further narrow the results.

Getting started with the catalogue illustrates these steps to guide you in finding items in your language.

Trove resources in your language

Trove is a discovery service which showcases records from many Australian libraries, museums and other cultural collecting institutions. To conduct a basic search from the Trove homepage, click into the white search bar and type the name of your language. Starting with this quick keyword search gives an insight into the materials and coverage. From the search results, choose a category such as Images, Maps & Artefacts. To refine, select 'Advanced search' on the right-hand menu and navigate to the 'Language' dropdown option and select 'Tok Pisin' or other options as applicable. Each category will list different languages, because these reflect the content of items within the respective formats.

The Trove search help page describes language search options and suggests searching for a keyword in that particular language. To continue a search for Tok Pisin material, create a basic search from the Trove homepage for the work 'pikinini' (child). This displays results across many categories. Another way to refine search results is to use the term 'language:' prior to the language name. For example, a basic search across all Trove categories for 'language:Tuvaluan' gives results which are very focused on linguistic materials.

Some search results are historical, such as the digitised issues of Harina, a Motu language journal published by the London Missionary Society. Other older publications include the full-text articles in Trove's Digitised Newspapers and Gazettes category. Several newspapers from Papua New Guinea can be viewed by their title listings, such as the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier (Port Moresby: 1969 – 1981). This newspaper coverage is provided within certain publication dates for copyright reasons, more modern news sources available through eResources are described above.

Recent news in the Pacific

The Library provides registered users with access to recent newspapers and magazines through subscription databases. Local and international titles relevant to the Pacific region are available through the eResources portal, with individual databases listed under the Browse eResources tab. More information on eResources is available on: Access eResources.

PressReader gives access to over 7,100 news and magazine publications in over 40 languages from more than 80 countries.

Articles are presented with full-colour images and dynamic page-turning with the same appearance as the printed publications. Search for countries of interest to see stories published internationally, or choose individual titles such as Bloomberg Businessweek (Asia), Fiji Sun, mailife, and PNG Now.

Current coverage from the past 3 months can be automatically translated with one click to 19 languages, including French and Japanese.

Newsbank Access Global is a major database with access to articles from over 7,000 news sources. Articles are text-based, with select titles providing full-colour images. Search for articles with keywords or by publication title such as Fiji Times, Marshall Islands Journal, or PACNEWS (Fiji). Refine by region with Map Search to see the BBC Monitoring Selected Reports for countries in the Pacific. Depending on the title, newspapers can be viewed or searched from the past few months or years.

These sites provide access to Pacific research in Australian universities and other scholarly communities.

painting of a landscape including the edge of a building

James Gay Sawkins, (1855), School house and native missionary's residence Ooloa [i.e. Olaa], Sandwich Islands, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-134664190

  • Pacific Step-up: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
    Australia's Pacific Step-up places people at the heart of our Pacific partnerships, with measures to strengthen and celebrate our people connections.
  • Pacific Economic Cooperation Council
    PECC is a partnership of senior individuals from business and industry, government, academic and other intellectual circles.
  • Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
    Represents Heads of Government of all the independent and self-governing Pacific Island countries, Australia and New Zealand. Since 1971 it has provided member nations, currently numbering 16, with the opportunity to express their joint political views and to cooperate in areas of political and economic concern.
Picture showing areas of 'The Western Pacific'

Great Britain. Central Office of Information. (1951). The Western Pacific, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233249784

  • National Library of New Zealand
    Collects and maintains literature and information resources that relate to New Zealand and the Pacific. Links to the Alexander Turnbull library.
  • Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB)
    The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau copies archives, manuscripts and rare printed material relating to the Pacific Islands. Their website includes information on the materials sought and copied, catalogues and publications, current projects and recent releases of microfilms.
  • Pacific Research Archives (PRA)
    The Pacific Research Archives at the Australian National University is the premier Australian centre for research and teaching resources on the Pacific. It ollects, preserves and provides access to unpublished and published research material from and about the Pacific Islands including records of companies and trade unions which operated in the Pacific and records of anthropologists, linguists geographers and historians who lived and worked in the Pacific.
  • University of Adelaide - Pacific Collection
    The University's Pacific Collection of more than 8,000 volumes includes both books and journals on the history, culture, art, fiction and language of the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, with particular emphasis on the central Pacific. Additional strengths include mission history and Pacific anthropology/ethnology journals.
  • University of the South Pacific
    The premier provider of tertiary education in the Pacific region and an international centre of excellence for teaching, research consulting and training on all aspects of Pacific culture, environment and human resource development needs.
sepia-toned photo of a man with an old camera set up on a tripod

E. W. Searle, (1911), J.W. Beattie photographer, South Sea Islands, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-142169826

black and white photo of an old building with Angus & Robertson on the sign

Angus and Robertson booksellers, 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, 1915, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138046678

Page published: 20 Nov 2023

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