AustLit selectively indexes Australian literary content in accordance with our Scope Policy. AustLit indexes monographs from a wide range of Australian and international publishers in the areas of Australian creative literature monographs and literary criticism and theory monographs about Australian literature as comprehensively as possible.

AustLit's coverage of Australian literary monographs is not yet uniform but work continues towards comprehensive retrospective coverage.

The Australian literary contents of many anthologies, selected works and other compilations are indexed individually. Indexing of such contents is undertaken as resources permit.

AustLit's coverage of some popular fiction genres such as westerns and romances, and of self-published works, is representative rather than full.