Video material created and collected by the Instructional Resources Unit (IRU) for teaching and other ANU uses such as 1) promotional, e.g. University Open Days, student activities and campus life, facilities and study requirements for students, etc., 2) official visits and events, e.g. conferring of degrees ceremonies, the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit, etc., 3) interviews - Professor AD Hope; Professor Manning Clark; Dr HC Coombs; Emeritus Professor Oscar Spate; Sir John Eccles; British social anthropologist, Sir Edmund Leach, etc., 4) lectures and public addresses - Research School of Physical Sciences, Department of Zoology and a series of Twilight Lectures presented by the ANU and the National Aquarium, 5) commissions and contracts e.g. Questacon, Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1990 Floriade Festival, NSW Chamber of Mines Metals and Extractive Industries, Commonwealth Environment Protection Agency, etc., 6) commissions by ANU Departments, often recorded in the field, e.g. Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories; fossil locations in the Gogo area of the Kimberleys; Department of Forestry student field trips; the freshwater and wetland ecology of Iron Bark Creek, etc. At the time of the IRU’s closure, Departments were contacted and encouraged to claim any items which they considered to be of value and for which they had an ongoing use. This explains some of the gaps in the collection.

The recordings are of undergraduate lectures, public lectures and debates on current issues, addresses delivered at seminars and conferences, readings of literary works including plays and poetry, interviews, and radio programs produced for 2XX. Among the presenters are the 14th Dalai Lama, academics Professor R Johnson, Dr B Rawson, Dr H Kinloch, Professor R Elliot (reading Chaucer), Professor G Sawer, Professor Manning Clark, Professor Ted Ringwood, Professor G Zubrzycki, Professor Robin Gollan and Professor Derek Freeman, Vice-Chancellors Dr HC Coombs and Professor DA Low, politicians Gough Whitlam and Senator Susan Ryan, writers Patrick White and Xavier Herbert, and poets AD Hope, Bob Brissenden, and Rosemary Dobson. Most are on reel-to-reel tapes but some audio cassettes were produced in the period 1984-1986.

There are over 70 mainly colour slide transparencies, many taken by Bob Cooper, of the campus and also copies of older photographs of ceremonies and events as background information for an introductory training course in the Administrative Development Program.