AustLit

The video below shows how to search for authors by cultural heritage.

We have used the example of searching for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, but the search can be repeated with any heritage in our database. Simply select the relevant heritage from the drop-down menu.

For more information on how heritage operates on AustLit, see Tips for Searching by Heritage below the video.

The video has no audio but has captions at the bottom of the screen. The captions are also available as text below the video. The video can be made full screen with the icon in the bottom right-hand corner. It runs for 0:54.

Captions appear exactly as they do on the video, and are preceded by a time stamp.

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0:00 Begin by going to Advanced Search.

0:09 Then to Personal Details and Cultural Heritage.

0:19 Select 'Aboriginal' from the drop-down menu.

0:25 Use the plus sign to add a new field.

0:29 Then select 'Torres Strait Islander'.

0:37 Use the down arrow to toggle the field to blue.

0:38 Now you're searching on both heritages.

0:41 Click Search. The search may take a while.

0:46 Click on a author's name to see their AustLit record.

0:50 Your search is done!

0:51 Try repeating it with different heritages.

Heritage in AustLit is a matter of self-reporting: AustLit assigns heritage to people based on their public identification. Heritage is based on identification not geography: for example, an author born in Greece will not be identified as of Greek heritage unless they actively and publicly identify as Greek (or Greek-Australian).

If you want to search for people with more than one heritage (e.g., Greek and Italian), don't toggle the fields to blue: this will search for people with both (or all) the listed heritages.