The institute's mandate is to advance the study of the North American and circumpolar Arctic through the natural and social sciences, the arts and humanities and to acquire, preserve and disseminate information on physical, environmental and social conditions in the North.

The Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS) database contains 68,000 records describing publications and research projects about northern Canada. ASTIS includes all subjects and covers the three territories, the northern parts of seven provinces and the adjacent marine areas. ASTIS records contain abstracts, detailed subject and geographic indexing terms, and links to 14,000 publications that are available online.

ASTIS is responsible for the Canadian IPY Publications Database, which is part of the International Polar Year Publications Database.

The following databases are subsets of the main ASTIS database. They provide selected records and background information for specific regions, subjects or projects.

• The Nunavut Environmental Database, describing 22,000 publications and research projects about Nunavut.
• The Inuvialuit Settlement Region Database, describing 10,000 publications and research projects about the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
• The Hydrocarbon Impacts database, describing 6700 publications and research projects about the environmental impacts, socio-economic effects and regulation of oil and gas exploration, development and transportation in northern Canada. See the Key Publications page for an overview of the literature.
• The Yukon Biodiversity Database, describing 6100 publications and research projects about the biology of Yukon and the Beaufort Sea.
• The Nunavik Bibliography, describing 5700 publications about northern Quebec.
• The Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database, describing 4700 publications about all aspects of human health in the circumpolar region.
• The Arctic Contents page of this website, which provides access to the 2500 papers, notes, commentaries, editorials, profiles, obituaries and essays that have appeared in AINA's peer-reviewed journal Arctic.
• The NCP Publications Database, describing 1900 publications that have resulted from the Northern Contaminants Program.
• The Northern Granular Resources Bibliographic Database, describing 1800 publications about granular resources (gravel, sand and crushed rock for use in construction) in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. See the Key Publications page for an overview.
• The Canadian IPY Publications Database, describing 1200 publications by or about International Polar Year projects in Canada.
• The Kluane Lake Research Station Bibliography, describing 860 publications resulting from research at AINA's Kluane Lake Research Station.
• The Mining and the Aquatic Environment Bibliography, describing 510 publications on the effects of hard rock mining on the aquatic environment of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
  
• The AES NWT Water Bibliography, describing 218 publications prepared under the Arctic Environmental Strategy on all aspects of fresh water in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
• The Canadian Permafrost Conferences website, which provides searching and viewing of the 187 papers and other items that appeared in the proceedings of the five Canadian Permafrost Conferences (1962-1990).

ASTIS is working to improve its coverage of publications from the following northern Canadian research projects. (See the Project menu of the KLRS Bibliography for projects based at Kluane.) We may be able to create searchable publication databases for some of these projects in the future, but for now we are making available these incomplete lists of citations sorted by author.

• Mackenzie GEWEX Study (MAGS)
• International North Water Polynya Study (NOW)
• Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES)
• ArcticNet
  

All of the 3800 publications on the AINA Publications Server are available through ASTIS.

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