Designed to serve as a portal to Taiwan’s indigenous groups, this easy to access website incorporates internet resources, on-line services and other digital information that relates to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.

This integrated bibliographic catalog was commissioned by the Council of Indigenous Peoples, Executive Yuan, and compiled by the NTU Library. It currently primarily encompasses works of indigenous discourse, historical sources, and research publications, including research project reports and dissertations/theses from governmental and academic organizations. These are arranged by content and by indigenous  tribe. The database is currently available only to NTU, NCCU, the Academia Sinica, NTHU, the National Central Library, the National Taiwan Library, the National Taichung Library, the Taipei Public Library, and the Kaohsiung Public Library. The printed catalog was published in June 1999, and the online database is updated on a regular basis. To access the printed catalog, please visit the collection area in the Center.

The appellation of ‘Anli settlement’ was first seen in the Zhuluo County Annals. Being a Pingpu tribal community in the Qing Dynasty, originally named Lahodoboo, this community reportedly included nine sub-tribes, of which the settlements of Anli and of Dashe, located in what is now Shengang Township, Taichung County, were the most powerful and prosperous—hence the alternate name Anli-Dashe.

Land reclamation in the central regions of Taiwan began earlier in Anli-Dashe, a settlement that assumes a very significant role in Taiwan’s history of development. This archive comprises the documents and contracts preserved by the chieftain Pan family of Anli, its contents ranging from official documents such as announcements, instructions, replies to correspondence etc. and to non-governmental ones such as cultivation contracts, leases, acknowledgments of debt, and the like, the most numerous of which are land contracts. The time period spans the years between 1741 (the sixth year of the reign of Qianlong, emperor of the Qing Dynasty) and 1918 (the seventh year of the Republic of China) from which the collections of the Qianlong and the Jiaqing eras are largest in number. These Qing economic documents of central Taiwan are invaluable primary sources for research on the developmental history, the ethnic relations, and the land systems of central Taiwan.

Kanori Ino (1867-192) was a pioneer in the field of Taiwan studies. After Japan’s annexation of Taiwan in 1895, Ino was sent to the island to conduct anthropological research. He was the first to propose a comprehensive classification of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Carrying out numerous field studies and collecting materials throughout Taiwan, he left to posterity a prolific collection of notes and research resources. Ino also conducted research into the history and customs of Taiwan’s Han people, classified Taiwan’s history and conventions, and contributed to the Sotokufu (colonial government) project compiling Taiwan’s history. Throughout his life, Ino made remarkable contributions to the study of the history and customs of Taiwan as well as advancing research into the island’s indigenous peoples.

Antei Tashiro, the original owner of these documents, was a technician in the Taiwan Sotokufu (colonial government), specializing in botany. Having travelled to Taiwan to research the island’s flora at the beginning of the Japanese colonial era, Tashiro contributed many invaluable research reports to the field of botany, and thus became a pioneer in Taiwan’s botanical studies. This archive contains Tashiro’s own books—the significant research works of the age and reports on botany.

The Metadata-Search Engine of Resources on Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples.This metadata-search engine, set up with the establishment of the Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples Interlibrary Consortium, aims to integrate the individual search systems of association members. Since each member resource centre provides its own particular search engine, the metadata-search engine is limited to browsing a few of the available collection systems. These include the library resources of the following organizations: Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Resource Center, National Taiwan University, the Academia Sinica, National Chengchi University, National Chi Nan University, National Taitung University, National Hualien University of Education, National Pingtung University of Education, National Hsinchu University of Education, Tzu Chi University, National Museum of Natural Science, Yu-Shan Theological College and Seminary, the Kaohsiung Public Library, the Yilan Public Library, and the Miaoli Public Library.

Established by the National Taiwan University Library, the E-Learning Center offers guidance to the NTU Library and provides academic, special topic, and help courses instructing users how to make full use of the databases. The Tanhsin Archive Learning Web, for instance, helps users gain a deeper understanding of daily life in the Qing Dynasty.

In 2006, the National Taiwan University Library incorporated the “Web Archives” as a component part of its “Institutional Archiving” project and commenced developing the system by establishing the scope and the guiding policies of the archives. Dedicated to the “selecting,” “collecting,” and “preserving” of original web resources, the system is designed to preserve Taiwan’s heritage and to provide a search engine that may facilitate present and future academic development .

In terms of the issues covered, the resources are classified into two categories: (1) Features, and (2) Time Capsule. The former contains such topics as Austronesian cultural studies, while the latter pays close attention to issues concerning aboriginal peoples and displays related web links.

Ethnic and cultural diversity is an important part of Taiwan’s cultural heritage. Consequently,, one of the distinguishing features of the NTUWAS is the archiving of websites related to aboriginal groups. In addition to governmental organizations (e.g. the Council of Indigenous Peoples, and county, city level aboriginal bureaus), academic organizations (e.g. the “Digital Archive of Formosan Aborigines,” currently maintained by the Academia Sinica), and museums (e.g. the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines), the NTUWAS has extended the scope of its collection to the following categories:
I. People (blogs held by famous aborigines);
II. Life (daily lives of indigenous people inhabiting diverse regions);
III. Art & Culture (e.g. the RS Legend );
IV. Issues Related to the Aborigines’ Right to Life (e.g. the Windfallen Beech Incident in Smangus);
V. Indigenous Tribes (e.g. the Sizhou community in Xindian).
By December 2008, a total of 206 websites had been included in this archive, of which only about 20 percent of the aborigine-related links were no longer accessible.

This section of the archive focuses on the current affairs of the indigenous peoples of Formosa, such as the demolition and evacuation of the Sizhou community and the Windfallen Beech Incident in Smangus. Readers are welcome to recommend any relevant websites that have not been included in the NTUWAS.

The section primarily contains the websites of governmental and academic organizations related to Austronesian cultures, such as county or city aboriginal bureaus, the Formosan Language Digital Archive, and the Dictionary of Formosan Indigenous History, Language, and Culture.