Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, 1 May 1985, Page 51

Research Notes

Patricia Sargison’s bibliography of published sources for the study of women in New Zealand 1830-1914 was published by the Endowment Trust under the title Victoria’s Furthest Daughters in October 1984 with the aid of a grant from the New Zealand Founders’ Society. Copies are available from the Library at $lO (Friends- $8). The bibliography was originally compiled for Professor Sandra Myrcs, the 1983 Fulbright research scholar at the Turnbull, to assist in her studies of pioneer women in New Zealand and the American West.

A selection of the papers presented at the Turnbull-Royal Society of New Zealand conference on the history of science in New Zealand held in February 1983 has been published as In Search of New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage (Royal Society of New Zealand Bulletin 21). Copies are available from the Library at sls (Friends sl2). Publication was assisted by a grant from the Scientific Distribution Committee of the Lottery Board.

A new catalogue of the Library’s publications, with black and white illustrations of the prints, photographic posters and cards, was issued in October and is available free on request from the Library.

Dr J.K. Hale of the University of Otago has published two articles which had their origins in research conducted on the Library’s Milton collection in 1980. ‘The Significance of the Early Translations of Paradise Lost’ appeared in volume 63, number 1 of the Philological Quarterly (1984), and ‘Notes on Richard Bentley’s Edition of Paradise Lost (1732)’ in volume 18, number 2 of the Milton Quarterly (1984). Dr Hale contributed ‘Thomas Bentley to Dr Pearce: New Light on Richard Bentley’s Edition of Paradise Lost ’ to the May 1981 issue of the Turnbull Library Record.

The first volume of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford University Press) was launched at the Library on 13 November 1984 by the Hon. Russell Marshall, M.P., Minister of Education. The five volumes are edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, and have drawn heavily on the Turnbull’s Mansfield collection. Some financial assistance for the project was provided by the Research Endowment Fund.

The Endowment Trust Board has agreed to make $4,500 available for the publication of a bibliography of the Solomon Islands compiled by Sally Edridge. The publication will be a joint venture with the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Miss Edridge, who is presently First Assistant at the National Library’s Christchurch regional centre, was a library adviser in the Solomon Islands between 1974 and 1977 under the Volunteer Service Abroad scheme.

Grants have been approved from the Research Endowment Fund to Isabel Ollivier to complete editorial work on the text of the fifth and final volume of Early Eyewitness Accounts of Maori Life; to Professor Barbara Kirshcnblatt-Gimblctt to travel from Auckland to deliver a lecture on the preservation of Jewish historical records in New Zealand; to Anna Davin for a series of seminars on women’s history and the history workshop movement in Britain; and to Victoria University for some of the costs of a weekend conference on the preservation of theatre records.

Dr David R. Jones has been selected for the 1985 Fulbright research award at the Library. Dr Jones has been a member of the Higher Education Research Group at Yale, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, and is a member of the editorial board of the History of Higher Education Annual. His doctoral thesis (Yale 1982) was on the origins of the civic universities in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. Dr Jones will be studying the development of higher education in New Zealand.

During a brief visit to New Zealand in October 1984 by a group of senior library staff from the University of Hawaii the Turnbull organised a one-day professional colloquium. Six papers were presented to an invited audience of librarians, academic staff from Victoria University, and others with an interest in Pacific research collections. The papers were ‘Bibliographic Resources for New Zealand Studies’ (J.E. Traue); ‘The Turnbull Pictorial Collections’ (Marian Minson); ‘The National Register of Archives and Manuscripts’ (Philip Rainer); ‘Acquisition Problems in University of Hawaii Pacific Collections’ (Renee Heyum); ‘A Response to Ethnic Awareness: the Hawaiian Renaissance in Education’ (Agnes Quigg); and ‘The Librarian as Oral Historian: Researching and Accessing Ethnic Materials’ (Michaelyn Chou).

The Chief Librarian has been elected as the corresponding member for New Zealand on the Standing Committee of the Section on Rare and Precious Books and Documents of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA).