More than 9,000 books, including rare works on Pacific history, languages and culture, have been donated to the Vanuatu National Library, creating one of the country’s largest collections of Pacific research materials.
The initiative was led by retired archaeologist and former Australian National University (ANU) academic, Dr Matthew Spriggs, who decided to donate his personal library after volunteering at Vanuatu’s national library and recognising the need for a stronger Pacific focused collection.
What began as a personal contribution soon grew into a collaborative effort.
Fellow academics from ANU and other institutions responded to Spriggs’ call, donating books and research collections accumulated over decades of scholarly work.
Contributors included respected researchers Darrell Tryon, Jeff Siegel, David Walsh and Peter Bellwood.
The largest single contribution came from the late archaeologist Jack Golson, whose Pacific collection of about 3,500 books was shipped to Vanuatu in January 2026. Spriggs also donated more than 2,500 books from his own shelves.
When the final boxes were counted, the donation had reached an impressive 9,000 volumes.
“Jack would have been very pleased,” Spriggs said, adding that Golson’s final fieldwork was conducted in Vanuatu.
The books are now housed in a reference library serving school students, university researchers, linguists, government officials and community members.
The collection has also become a valuable resource for matters such as land dispute research.
For Vanuatu, which has the highest number of languages per capita in the world, the donation is particularly valuable. Much of the academic research documenting the country’s languages and cultures has traditionally been held overseas, especially in Australia. The new collection helps make that knowledge more accessible within Vanuatu.
Among the thousands of volumes are several rare and historically important works. These include early missionary translations of Pacific languages, a rare edition of a 17th century account of Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós and his encounter with Vanuatu, and a small 1857 book containing 48 traditional Māori songs printed in South Africa.
The Māori volume turned out to be exceptionally rare, with only four known copies held outside major libraries in Australia and New Zealand.
Transporting the collection was a major undertaking. At one stage, Spriggs’ apartment was filled with books stacked across nearly every available space.
In total, 188 boxes were packed into a shipping container and sent to Vanuatu.
Despite the effort, 16 boxes remain unopened.
The project is far from finished. Plans are being developed to expand the library’s facilities, raise its public profile and digitise important materials relating to Vanuatu languages by 2030, when the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence.
For Spriggs, the donation represents more than the transfer of books.
It is a way of ensuring that decades of accumulated knowledge continue to be used and shared.
Rather than sitting in storage, the books have found a new purpose in the country whose history, languages and cultures they help document, placing valuable knowledge directly into the hands of future generations of ni-Vanuatu readers and researchers.
