Two New History Research Guides from the Royal Society of NSW
Australia’s colonial and post-colonial history includes many conflicts and controversies. Two new digital reference guides could help modern historians and writers to better understand how many British-European migrant scholars studied, mapped and interpreted Indigenous people, places, animals, plants, geology, chemistry, fossils, weather conditions and astronomical phenomena.
After celebrating 200 years of its intellectual culture in 2021–2022, the Royal Society of NSW (RSNSW) produced two PDF research guides that can be downloaded via its website, royalsoc.org.au. These are:
Bicentennial Bibliography
Bicentennial Bibliography, listing and hotlinking to online scans of several thousand articles that were originally published by the RSNSW, and earlier colonial learned societies, from 1821 to 2021. Links take researchers to digital facsimiles of each article, as archived by the Smithsonian Institution’s online Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Keyword searches allow contemporary historians to quickly search for articles by author, names of particular people, or by keywords such as star, Deniliquin, x-ray, photography, Aborig, longitude, sandstone, or dinosaur.
Presidents’ Profiles
Presidents’ Profiles, listing 122 Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the RSNSW and its preceding societies since 1821. This PDF includes painted and photographic portraits and biographical summaries of many RSNSW Presidents, including early Governors of New South Wales (although information about some Presidents has not yet been found).
This PDF also is keyword searchable; allowing historians to identify and focus on trailblazers from specific fields of research or professional backgrounds.
The RSNSW’s retiring President, Dr Susan Pond AM, welcomed the new research guides, which she said will ‘build understanding of the society’s history and generational bridges between past innovators, contemporary historians and today’s prominent leaders and emerging talents’.
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