Collections

Book and journal collection

The library's collection contains 25,000 books and over 4,000 serial titles, of which approximately 2,500 are current. Through purchase and long-standing exchange agreements with other geoscience institutions in Australia and overseas, an extensive collection of earth sciences material has been developed.

Geological survey holdings

The library has extensive collections of material published by geological surveys. All Australian surveys are represented and the collection has significant holdings from the USA, Great Britain and Canada with equally good holdings from European (German, French, Cyrillic), Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), and Pacific countries.

Geoscience Australia archive

The library maintains a repository collection of all Geoscience Australia material, including that of its predecessors, the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO) and the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics (BMR). The material dates from when the first BMR Record was published in 1942.

Research databases

Visitors can search a range of research databases to locate geoscience literature in journals, trade magazines, conference papers, and reports from government and non-government organisations. Databases include:

• GeoRef
• AusGeoRef

Maps and atlases

The library has substantial holdings of Australian and overseas geological, topographical, geochemical, geophysical and other thematic maps. This collection includes maps produced by Geoscience Australia, AGSO, BMR, and the Australian State geological surveys. The library also maintains a large collection of world and specialised atlases.

Airphotos

There are more than 10,000 boxes of Australian and Papua New Guinean airphotos dating from the 1940s held in the library. Most of the approximately 1.4 million photos are black and white, but some of the more recent images are coloured.

Search Geoscience Australia's online catalogue of flight line diagrams to identify relevant airphotos. Flight line diagrams show aircraft paths (also known as runs), the centres of the photos in relation to ground features and film reference numbers.

Information on acquiring airphotos can be obtained from Geoscience Australia's Aerial Photography page.