Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 May 1987, Page 44

Research Notes

Sally Edridge’s Solomon Islands Bibliography to 1980, published in 1985 by the Turnbull in association with the Solomon Blands National Library and the Institute of Pacific Studies, has won thejohn Harris Award of the New Zealand Library Association for excellence in bibliography.

Professor Robert Ell wood of the Department of Religion, University of Southern California, has been awarded a Fulbright research fellowship for study at the Turnbull during 1987. Professor Ellwood proposes to compile a working inventory and historical account of the new religious movements among Europeans in New Zealand since 1840 and to present comparative perspectives on such movements in New Zealand and the United States. The movements to be studied include Theosophists, Rosicrucians, Spiritualists, initiatory organisations (including Scientology), and Eastern groups from Vedanta, Transcendental Meditation, Western Zen and the Unification Church. Professor Ellwood’s books include Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America; Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America; One Way: the Jesus Movement and its Meaning; and The Eagle and the Rising Sun: Americans and the New Religions of Japan.

The official opening of the new National Library building has been set for Wednesday 5 August. A five-day programme of special events is being planned to mark the occasion. The Turnbull’s Manuscripts Section will be opening on 6 April to researchers who have advised the Library of their special needs, and the rest of the Turnbull’s collections will be available from late May.

Professor A W Crosby, the Turnbull’s first Fulbright research fellow, has produced a book, Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1986) which draws substantially on the research done at the Turnbull in 1979. Professor Crosby used the New Zealand experience as a case study of the kind of ecological takeover discussed in general terms in the early part of his book. He is Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Turnbull has placed a subscription to the specialist collection ‘Publishing, the Booktrade and the Diffusion of Knowledge’ from ‘The Nineteenth Century’, a microfiche edition of printed books in English. ‘The Nineteenth Century’ is a large-scale programme to republish in microfiche over a 30-year term the English language books and pamphlets of research value within clearly defined subject areas published in the nineteenth century. The project will begin with the collections of the British Library and then move to the Bodleian and other research collections. The

‘Publishing, Booktrade’ collection includes the economics of publishing and the distribution of books; catalogues of libraries; auction sale catalogues; publishers’ catalogues; bibliographies; subject catalogues; new techniques in printing; the manufacture of paper; binding; libraries; copyright; legal deposit; and journalism. The Turnbull will receive 500 microfiche each year, initially for a five year period. The Turnbull’s collections on printing and publishing history and the arts and crafts of the book, the strongest historical collection in New Zealand, will be strengthened substantially by this microfiche publication.

Isabel Ollivier, transcriber and translator of accounts of French explorers for the series Early Eyewitness Accounts of Maori Life, has been awarded the John Dunmore Medal by the Federation of Alliances Francises of New Zealand. This annual award, established on the retirement of its namesake in 1984, recognises contributions to the knowledge or understanding of the part played by the French people or the French language in the development of the Pacific. Three volumes in the series, published by the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust with the assistance of Indosuez New Zealand Limited, have appeared so far.

Despite the limited access we were able to provide for our regular researchers during 1986 and early 1987 the output of publications which drew on the collections and services of the Turnbull seems to have set a new record both in numbers and quality. As well as the hundreds of books and articles acknowledging illustrations from the pictorial collections, and the dozens of family, local and institutional histories, we noted in particular Angela Ballara’s Proud to be White: a Survey of Pakeha Prejudice in New Zealand; James Belich’s The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict; Judith Binney’s Morehu: the Survivors; Raewyn Dalziel’s fulius Vogel: Business Politician; Sir Keith Sinclair’s A Destiny Apart; New Zealand’s Search for National Identity; Anne Kirker’s New Zealand Women Artists; and J. R. H. Andrews’s The Southern Ark; Zoological Discovery in New Zealand 1169-1900. All of the authors have been regular inhabitants of the reading rooms at 44 The Terrace over the past few years and we welcome these scholarly fruits of their labours.

Work is well advanced on the preparation of Women’s Words: A Guide to Manuscripts in the Alexander Turnbull Library Relating to Women in the Nineteenth Century, compiled by Diana Meads, the Manuscripts Librarian, and Kay Sanderson, formerly a member of the Manuscripts Section and now the Library’s Systems Librarian. The guide describes the contents of over 500 manuscript collections which contain material relating to nineteenth century women, and includes a name and subject index. It is hoped that a companion volume describing twentieth century collections will be prepared at a later date.

Changes in the organisational structure of the Turnbull leading to the creation of two major divisions, one responsible for collection devel-

opment and preservation and the other for library services, have begun. The changes, first proposed in 1985, are designed to improve the Turnbull’s ability to meet its objectives under the National Library Act. Collection development and preservation comes under a new position, the Keeper of the Collections, who is responsible initially for the oversight of the Manuscripts Section, the Archive of New Zealand Music, the pictorial research collections (Drawings and Prints, Maps, Photographic Archives) and Newspapers. Two new positions have been created in library services, a Technical Services Librarian in charge of cataloguing, acquisitions and serials, and a Reader Services Librarian responsible for the reading rooms, reference correspondence, the new Pictorial Reference Service, and the Maori subject specialist.

Tony Ralls, the Record’s Assistant Editor since 1983 with special responsibilities for negotiating production schedules and standards with our printers, has resigned from the position. Tony’s keen eye for detail and his commitment to the highest levels of expression and presentation have enabled him to make a major contribution to the Record over the past four years. Kay Sanderson and Philip Rainer have joined the team as Assistant Editors and were actively involved in the preparation of this issue.