The Awards Archive has two sections: Books and Catalogues:

• Books contains images of books shortlisted in the annual Book Design Awards, searchable by year, designer and other filters.
• Catalogues is a collection of downloadable PDFs of the catalogues published alongside the annual Awards. The catalogues include images of the shortlisted books, designer’s statements, judges’ reports and committee reports on the state of the industry each year.

The Awards Archive is a work in progress. No complete collection of winning books and annual Awards catalogues currently exists, in either hardcopy or digital form. Our aim is to compile a comprehensive, searchable digital archive which can be added to annually. This archive will be a rich historical resource for designers and scholars, as well as an invaluable tool for the contemporary book publishing industry.

The Australian Publishers Association donated a set of catalogues to ABDA when handing over custodianship of the Awards in 2013, and some missing catalogues have been contributed by committee members. The University of Technology Sydney Library generously provided staff and resources to digitise this collection of catalogues so they are fully searchable.

Watch this space for call-outs to help us locate and digitise the missing catalogues and book cover images. And if you have anything you think we should know about, we’d love you to get in touch.