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Reference Guides
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 its Bicentenary in 2021-2022, the Royal Society of New South Wales (RSNSW) has produced two PDF research guides that can be downloaded from its website, the National Library of Australia’s National Electronic Deposit (NED) page, Internet Archive and other sites.
RSNSW Bicentennial Bibliography
The Bicentennial Bibliography provides a 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. Hotlinks go to the digital facsimiles of each article, held by the Smithsonian Institution’s 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.
RSNSW Presidents’ Profiles
The President’s Profiles provide a listing of the 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 most Presidents, including many 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.
