The National Library of Australia is actively looking for stories from Australians with Indian heritage to add to the national collection.
Australians with Indian heritage are Australia’s fastest growing migrant group, comprising over 750,000 people in 2022. Indian diaspora communities have made a significant contribution to many aspects of Australian society and culture.
The Library is calling on Australians with Indian heritage to help the Library build a collection about their stories. The Library will be guided by those who are by self-definition a part of the Indian diaspora in Australia. That may include people who trace their heritage to the pre-Partition Indian subcontinent.
“By collecting stories of the Indian diaspora, the Library can preserve and make accessible to social historians of the future, the stories of today. The Library aims to ensure that a permanent documentary record of Australia’s migration history is publicly available.”, an announcement on the Library’s website said.
The National Library of Australia building located in Parkes, Canberra was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton. The National Library operates from 4 buildings: 3 in Canberra and one in Jakarta, Indonesia. These buildings house collection of approximately 10 million items.
The Library’s role, as defined by the National Library Act 1960, is to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people, as well as significant non-Australian library materials, are collected, preserved and made accessible either through the Library itself or through collaborative arrangements with other libraries and information providers.
What is the Library looking for?
The Library is looking for material by and about Australian-Indian people and communities, their lives and experiences, their work and organisations.
- Oral histories
- Books
- Newspapers or newsletters
- Manuscripts
- Pictures
- Photographs
- Posters
- Electronic publications
- Websites
- Ephemera
How you can contribute
The Library is reaching out to communities of Indian diaspora Australians asking them to donate their books, newsletters, pictures, manuscripts, and published materials to the national collection.
If you have items you’d be happy to donate, you can offer them for consideration here.
If you would like to express interest in contributing to our the Library’s history collection and share your story and experiences, get in touch with the Library.
You can deposit your electronic publications with the Library using the National edeposit service (NED). The Library’s National edeposit collection includes a diverse range of publications including Indian Voice, Indian movie entrepreneurship: not just song and dance, and Annapurna: Gastronomic Delights from my Fiji Indian Childhood.
What sort of things has the Library collected in the past?
The Library has collected some amazing and rare items. These include:
- A collection of photographs taken at the Boishakhi Mela, Bengali New Year festival, Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney, 20 April 2013.
- A photograph of Bharatam Dance Company production, Navagraha: The Planets of Destiny, George Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre, 7 June 1996.
- Oral histories, such as an interview with musician and former Artistic Director of the Institute of Eastern Music,  Ashok Roy recorded in 1998 and an interview with Sadhana Mahajani recorded in 2019 which describes her life as a doctor including working in health care in the Northern Territory.
- Personal papers of astrophysicist, Ragbir Bhathal.
- A collection of archived websites on the Indian diaspora in Australia – from the Westpac Indian Film Festival in Sydney to news sites such as the Indian Sun.
- A run of issues, from 2011 to 2017, of the newspaper, G’day India, published in Melbourne. The G’day India website has been captured every year since 2008 in the Library’s web archive.
