There are many wonderful resources being produced by a variety of organisations, institutions and individuals at the moment. Why not have a look at the selection below to see the links that I have found to be innovative or supportive for professional historians.
**New content, added 2 February 2023.
- Emilie Lagartixa’s ‘Pacific Matildas: Finding the women in the history of Pacific archaeology’, offers Pacific researchers a fabulous database to find the often underrepresented, poorly recorded, labour of women in the Pacific. You can learn more about the project and access materials here> https://lnkd.in/gg3YgYFy
- The State Library of Victoria has facilitated access to an Australasian Literature database that contains material from the 1930s to the present day from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. To access, log in with your SLVIC membership details.
- The NSW State Archives hosted this fascinating and educational webinar about how to find women in their archives.
- The Australian National University Library has recently completed digitisation of an extensive collection of Pacific language bibles and supporting grammars. This collection of Pacific linguistics bibles was gifted to the Australian National University in 2014 by the Australian Bible Society. It is a rare collection containing 337 publications and 11 supporting grammar folders. The bibles range in size and feature many Pacific languages. The collection is now open to the world via the ANU Open Research Repository and has already been viewed more than 11,000 times. The most downloaded item to date is Rotuman grammar and dictionary : comprising Rotuman phonetics and grammar and a Rotuman-English dictionary The most viewed item to date is Learning to speak the Enga language in the Mai and Raeapo dialects : workbook : language lessons for New Guinea Lutheran Mission-Missouri Synod staff / prepared by O.C. Hintze.
- The authors and creators at Talanoa have created a wonderful list of Pasifika podcasts.
- Aussie historians/archaeologists want to support History teachers and their students. Therefore, they have created short essays on the Frontier Wars. Check out https://archaeologyonthefrontier.com/.
- A new YouTube series Pacific Level Up. Historian Damon Salesa presents a new web series that is designed for young Pacific people. It will feature presentations by and conversations with other Pasifika scholars and teachers.
- The State Library of Victoria is working hard to maintain community connections and provide resources to members. Highlights include the #ASKSLV resource, and Library members can access 200,000 new ebooks via the EBESCO database until 30 June, covering fiction, travel, true crime, education, languages, philosophy, technology, engineering and world history. And for our many members whose history research was halted by the Library’s closure, Ancestry has been made available for use from home until 30 April. This database has never before been offered for use at home. What a fantastic resource for home-based users.
- The University of Hawaii Press has put 89 of its publications online as open access. Browse their website for classic Pacific History texts. hawaiiopen.org
-
Dramatic changes to the ways in which we socialise have occurred due to government and institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we learn to negotiate these challenges there are demands for our professional lives to continue. In response, I have established a series of dedicated Shut Up and Write (Create) sessions online.
- The History Council of Victoria has compiled a simple, accessible, list of things for historians to do while the buildings of major GLAM institutions are closed, but they are functioning online.
- JSTOR provides resources remotely to institutional users. For independent researchers, there are a limited, but still substantial, amount open access articles available.
- Through Amplify the State Library of New South Wales offers you an opportunity to explore, listen and transcribe oral histories. From interviews with bridge builders to Faith Bandler, there is an absolute treasure trove of material here.
- The School for Advanced Research (SAR) published Guidelines for Collaboration. This document is a theoretical and practical guide to building successful collaborations between Indigenous communities, museums, and other collecting institutions.
- TROVE is my first stop when starting any Australian research project. With books, images, maps, and much more it is a wonderful space to explore.
- The Australian Joint Copying Project was made for historians (yes, I have the evidence), yet it seems to have been largely forgotten by contemporary researchers. With the project to be completely digitised by mid-2020, I hope it will again be utilised by historians of Oceania.
- The Internet Archive can be a bit of a rabbit hole for new users, but if you approach the search bar with a list of terms in mind, you will have a marvellous time.
- Project Gutenberg offers the opportunity to access books that would otherwise require a visit to a Special Collections room.
Colourful Histories 