‘Review note: research sources miscellany’, Honest History, 12 June 2014
Honest History’s constant (perhaps obsessive) digging into historical sources turns up, as well as individual gems, lodes of promising ore. From World War I, the National Archives has a finding aid and links to records on the conscription referenda, using which will remind scholars that this was a period of our history characterised by deep divisions on the home front. Across Canberra’s lake, the current update from ANU’s Noel Butlin Archives always provides a window into its extensive holdings, which have a bias towards economic history.
South of the Murray, Gary Foley’s Koori History Website Project accesses archives, features and multi-media resources. (Michael Westaway tells why learning Indigenous history is important not just for Indigenous children.) Still in ‘Mexico‘ (the land south of the river), Museum Victoria has a site featuring videos from historians such as Alistair Thomson, Graeme Davison and Michael Cathcart on aspects of the practice of history. Down the corridor there are resources on family history, broadly defined.
Some families (probably more than we realise) have convicts in the cellar and Inside History has links to ten sites which may help reveal them. Some observers reckon that Gallipoli helped Australia wipe out our ‘convict stain’ but this list of books and films (English, March 2014) on the Great War ranges more widely than that. Finally, if one effect of Gallipoli was to obscure the great achievement of Federation then the National Library’s resources on Federation can help redress the balance.