Notes and Comments

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XV, Issue 1, 1 May 1982, Page 57

Notes and Comments

Fulbright research scholar for 1982 The New Zealand-United States Educational Foundation has announced that Associate Professor Sandra Myres of the Department of History, University of Texas at Arlington, has been awarded a research scholarship at the Turnbull under the Fulbright-Hays programme during 1982. Professor Myres expects to spend about six months from June 1982 examining the diaries and letters of pioneer women in New Zealand for a comparative study ‘Women and the Frontier Experience’. Her recent publications include Ho for California! Women’s Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library (1980) and Cavalry Wife: the Diary of Eveline M. Alexander (1977). Professor Myres has been a Huntington Library Fellow (1977), a Fellow of the Newberry Library (1978), held a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 1979 and a Huntington-Hayes Fellowship in 1980.

Grants from Research Fund Recent grants from the Alexander Turnbull Library Research Endowment Fund to support ‘scholarly research and publication based on the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library’ included $5,000 to Dr Anne Salmond of the University of Auckland to employ Miss Isobel Ollivier to edit complete transcriptions and translations of the New Zealand sections of the accounts of the French exploring expeditions of de Surville, du Fresne, d’Entrecasteaux, Duperrey, Dumont d’Urville, Laplace, Cecille, and Dupetit-Thouars between 1769 and 1840. The texts, to be published by the Turnbull, are part of a major project under the direction of Dr Salmond, to make available eyewitness accounts of Maori life before the settlement of Europeans in New Zealand. Miss Ollivier worked on the Turnbull’s copies of the documents during 1980 and spent 1981 in France, with the assistance of a French government scholarship, examining the originals and identifying additional accounts not available in New Zealand.

Small grants were made to Dr Peter Whitehead and Dr Rudiger Joppien to travel from Australia to use the Turnbull collections. Dr Whitehead, head of the department of fishes at the British Museum (Natural History) worked on the Swainson natural history drawings, particularly those relating to South America, and gave a lecture at Victoria University and to the Friends of the Turnbull Library. Dr Joppien, a curator at the Kunstgewerbmuseum in Cologne and Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, worked on the William Ellis drawings and

examined other graphic material relating to the Cook voyages andjoseph Banks. He is preparing under the general editorship of Bernard Smith the volume of the graphic materials from Cook’s third voyage for publication in the Oxford University Press three-volume edition of the paintings and drawings from Cook’s Pacific voyages. Grants were also made to Mr Kenneth Hopkins for research on the Rex Hunter papers; DrJ. E. Cookson, University of Canterbury, for research on the peace movement in New Zealand 1909-1945; Professor Howard Mayer Brown, University of Chicago, for travel to participate in the national musicology seminar at the Turnbull in August 1981; and to Dr Robin Alston of the British Library’s ESTC project, for travel to participate in seminars, lectures and discussions on the bibliographic control of early printed books.

Grants for publications Two grants have recently been approved from the funds of the Endowment Trust to assist with the publication of items from the collections. The Auckland University Press has been granted $2,000 towards the costs of publishing Pritchard’s ‘Aggressions of the French at Tahiti’ edited by Dr Paul de Deckker, and the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music, University of Auckland, has been granted SI,OOO for the publication of a catalogue of the Maori Purposes Fund Board’s collection of tape recordings made by W. T. Ngata between 1953 and 1958. The tapes, part of the Turnbull collections, were lodged in the Archive some five years ago for copying and cataloguing so that they could be made more widely available. Copies of the catalogue will be placed free of charge in libraries throughout New Zealand and the Archive will make copies of the tapes available on request.

Turnbull Conference on the History of Science The country’s first major conference on the history of science and sources for the study of this neglected field of intellectual history in New Zealand will be held in Wellington from Saturday 12 February to Monday 14 February 1983. The conference, co-sponsored by the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library, through its Research Fund, aims to bring together scholars, curators and scientists from at home and overseas to present and discuss papers on the state, progress, sources and prospects for this area of scholarship in and concerning New Zealand. Since 1865 Wellington has developed as a major institutional centre for New Zealand science, and the Turnbull Library has been particularly fortunate in becoming the repository of many papers and graphic records of individual scientists including, notably, the Man tell family, William Swainson, John Abbot, Walter L. Buller and Julius von Haast, some of whose work and remains have significance far beyond New Zealand in Britain, North America and Europe. In recent years the Library has also begun to acquire the archives of professional and specialist

scientific groups and its proximity to other major scientific institutions and libraries makes Wellington an important centre for such research. Collections in other places, particularly Dunedin, Auckland, Nelson and Christchurch, are also significant in the discipline, and it is proposed that the conference will address itself to research on these. The meeting has been planned to follow the XV Pacific Science Congress in Dunedin, 1-11 February 1983. Sir Charles Fleming, FRS, has kindly agreed to chair the organising committee. This will be the third major research seminar sponsored by the Turnbull Research Fund. Participation in the presentation of scholarly papers will, in the first instance, be by invitation but the organisers are also very anxious to hear from possible registrants. The Library and the Royal Society are severely constrained by space limitations and it is desirable that numbers be maintained at a comfortable level for discussion of the papers. Enquiries are most welcome and should be addressed to The Secretary, History of Science Conference, Alexander Turnbull Library, P.O. Box 12-349, Wellington. It is anticipated that the registration fee will be about NZS6O.

Grant for Archive of New Zealand Music Mr Ashley Heenan, Chairman of the New Zealand Composers Foundation, recently announced that the Foundation had awarded an annual grant of SI,OOO to the Turnbull’s Archive of New Zealand Music. The funds are to be used at the Library’s discretion in building and making accessible the collections related to New Zealand music. This year’s grant will be used for the oral history programme in music, to record on tape the reminiscences, ideas and knowledge of persons who have made significant contributions to or who are knowledgeable in New Zealand musical activities. The generosity of the Foundation is very much appreciated, and ways will be determined for the grant to benefit as many areas of New Zealand music as possible.

National seminar of musicologists During the weekend of 22-23 August 1981 the Turnbull was host to a national seminar of New Zealand musicologists organised by Dr Peter Walls of the Music Department, Victoria University. The seminar was planned around the visits to New Zealand of Professor Howard Mayer Brown, the eminent American author and musicologist, and Bruce Haynes, the renowned baroque oboist. The Turnbull Research Endowment Fund made a small grant towards Professor Brown’s travel expenses within New Zealand. Papers presented at the seminar were ‘Eighteenth century vocal cadenzas’ by Professor Brown; ‘Continuo accompaniment for full voices: some explanations, difficulties and embarrassments in the music of Peter Phillips’ by Professor John Steele (University of Otago); ‘Trouv'ere chanson’ by Dr Fiona McAlpine (University of Auckland); ‘Early double reeds’ by Bruce Haynes (Royal Conservatory of Music, The Hague);

‘Henry Playford’ by Ross Harvey (Victoria University); ‘Leopold Hoffman’ by Allan Badley (University of Auckland); ‘A few personal problems in nineteenth century musicology’ by Jeremy Commons (Victoria University); and ‘Eighteenth and nineteenth century Russian music journalism’ by Dr Gerald Seaman (University of Auckland). The weekend concluded with a business meeting of the New Zealand Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia at which it was resolved to form a New Zealand Musicological Society.

Norman Morris honoured The Turnbull Library’s ‘man in London’, Norman Morris received the Queen’s Service Medal for public service (Q.S.M.) in the New Year Honours List. Mr Morris retired from the staff of the New Zealand High Commission in London in June 1980 after 40 years of service during which time he served in a number of positions including those of Private Secretary, Press Officer, and Public Relations Officer. For as long as most of us can remember, Norman Morris has been active on behalf of the Turnbull in London, keeping a watch on local events, negotiating with donors and vendors, and briefing our agents for auctions at Sotheby’s and Christies. After his retirement he agreed to continue as the Turnbull’s official agent in London. The Friends of the Turnbull have on more than one occasion in the past recognised his services to the Library with appropriate gifts and will take considerable pleasure in this official recognition by Her Majesty the Queen. Norman Morris is, like Alexander Turnbull, an ex-pupil of Dulwich College.

Overseas visits by staff members The Chief Librarian travelled to the United States during October 1981 to attend the ‘quarter of a millenium’ celebrations of the Library Company of Philadelphia (founded by Benjamin Franklin and his friends as a public library, and now one of the major research libraries in the United States) and to study the market for and promote the sales of the Endowment Trust’s publication of John Abbot’s paintings of the insects of Georgia (Record, May 1978, p. 26-36). A grant was made by the Trustees of the National Library for the costs of attending the Library Company’s two-day conference and the Endowment Trust and Whitcoulls made grants to cover the costs of promoting the Abbots. Mr P. L. Barton, the Map Librarian, visited state and university map collections and antiquarian map dealers in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne from 21 September to 2 October 1981, with the financial assistance of the Australia-New Zealand Foundation, the Trustees of the National Library, and the Turnbull Library Endowment Trust. Mr Barton located some 90 maps of New Zealand in Australian collections which are not held by Turnbull and made arrangements for photographic copies to be supplied to the Library. An important find in the Dixson Library was a lithograph of Samuel Cobham’s ‘Proposed Plan of the City of Wellington’ dated 1839. A detailed report prepared by Mr Barton will

be of considerable value in planning the accommodation and organisation of the map collection in the new National Library building. Mrs Patricia Olliff, a manuscripts assistant with special responsibility for church records, visited two repositories in the north of England with major collections of church records during a private visit to England. The Norfolk Record Office has strong collections of nonconformist archives and the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, a research institute within the University of York, specialises in the ecclesiastical history of Yorkshire, with very strong collections of Church of England records. Mrs Olliff received a small grant from the Trustees of the National Library for travel in the north of England. Her detailed report on the two institutions provides a number of pointers for the development of the Turnbull as a centre for research on church records.

More for the discerning collector The Friends have recently been given multiple copies of several interesting publications and these are now being offered for sale at the Library’s office. The choice item is a small pamphlet containing the Old Testament books of Daniel and Jonah translated by W. G. Puckey and printed by William Colenso at Paihia in 1840 (Williams 43 and 44) which is priced at $lO to Friends and sl2 to the public. Two printed plans, ‘Sections of Ngatapa Pa, Poverty Bay, taken by the Colonial Forces . . . sth January 1869’ (published 1884, 31 X 51cm) and ‘Plan of Taurangaika Pa, West Coast, abandoned by Titokowaru when attacked by the Colonial Force under Col. Whitmore, February 3, 1869’ (36 X 46cm) are priced at $5 to Friends and $6 to the public; and a black and white map ‘Central Portion of Wellington City’, published by W. A. G. Skinner, Government Printer, Wellington, ca. 1930 (57 X 31 cm), is available at $4 to Friends and $5 to the public. Postal orders should include an additional $1 per order for packing and postage. Proceeds from sales will go to the general funds of the Friends.