School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Divers observations on Australians: a historical library

Lee, Jenny ( 1988)

Now we confront the five reference volumes of Australians: A Historical Library. These books’ very appearance suggests authority: they are weighty, dignified; they fall open without disintegrating; their typography is conservative but highly legible. They’re real books, as opposed to the cheap paperbacks that have perforce become our staple diet. At the same time, they are pitched towards a non-specialist audience. The language is fairly straightforward and they are heavily illustrated, with generous use of colour. Given the ‘slice’ approach adopted in other volumes of this ‘library’, these reference volumes bear a particular load: they have to provide a readily accessible ‘quick fix’ of basic information that will at least fill in the topography of the rest of the cake. To be blunt, taken as a whole they don’t discharge the responsibility very well. While they contain a mass of useful information and embody a lot of good work by a lot of good historians, as a set of reference volumes they have many inadequacies and inconsistencies.