Curtin University Library was recently awarded a commendation for our initiative ‘Engaging with Indigenous Perspectives Through the Library’s Collections and Services’ at the 2023 Library Board Award for Innovation and Collaboration in the Metro and Large Regional category.
The ‘Indigenous Perspectives’ initiative started in 2021 and was led by Anita Sallenbach and Petra Dumbell as an effort to indigenise and decolonise our collection and services. The work is ongoing, and outcomes to date include:
- A twice-yearly book club event for the Curtin community which discusses Indigenous Australian issues. Books discussed so far include Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu; Anita Heiss’ Growing up Aboriginal in Australia; and Quentin Beresford’s Rob Riley: an Aboriginal Leader’s Quest for Justice.
- A soon-to-be-released series of podcasts that provide a platform for Indigenous Australian matters, history and culture, including reconciliation and on-Country immersion work experience.
- The creation of an Indigenous Australian content facet in the catalogue, which allows users to discover Indigenous materials more easily and integrate these resources into their learning, teaching and research practices. The facet is in its final testing stage and will be made live in the second half of 2023.
- The addition of Austlang codes to catalogue records to allow searches to be refined by Indigenous Australian languages.
- Two new public facing tags in our Reading Lists software ‘Indigenous Australian Author’ and ‘Global First Nations Author’ to increase students’ awareness of the importance of including Indigenous voices into their assignments.
- Nyungar word of the week slides displayed on screens in TL Robertson Library to integrate more Indigenous perspectives into our spaces, to be released in the second half of 2023.
- A survey to Australian academic libraries circulated in late 2023, with the intent to identify similar work being done nationally and to establish an online community-of-practice.
An important part of our initiative process was seeking input and collaborating with Indigenous colleagues across the University. The Reading Lists author tag project and book club project are both a direct result of collaboration with Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CAS) and Cultural Capabilities Team staff. We also recruited and employed a student from CAS to the project team; her valuable lived experience as a Nyungar woman brought a wealth of knowledge and context to the initiative.
The initiative has been received positively from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues and students, with strong commitment from the University’s Indigenous community for our work. We have had many valuable opportunities to learn from the community, and throughout the initiative have sought to be aware of cultural labour and not adding unnecessarily to the workload of Indigenous staff.
University Librarian Kylie Percival was pleased with the recognition of the Library’s efforts to improve engagement with Indigenous perspectives. “Libraries haven’t always been welcoming places for Indigenous Australian people, and it takes effort on our behalf to start shifting this dynamic. We’re proud to be doing this important work and we hope this leads to better outcomes for our Indigenous students, colleagues and the wider community,” she said.
We would like to thank the following staff for their work on the multi-year Indigenous Perspectives initiative: Angie Heelas, Teresa Bennett Marie Clarke, Jill Kadota, Sheela Krnjajic, Sally Laming, Daniel Piczak, Tracy Piper, Amber Wilson, Natalie Woolaston, and initiative leaders Petra Dumbell and Anita Sallenbach.
