La Trobe Library Journal

Sounding 1: BEFORE 1840 The notes, journals and characters of Aboriginal Protectors William Thomas and his Chief George Robinson form the backbone of this compilation. With this ethnographic material we learn something of the Kulin worldview into this mostly white-fella history. Sounding 1: Before 1840 describes the initial British and European experiences, events, observations, intentions, self-serving judgements, ignorance, naivete, treachery and so on when they found Oz and proclaimed the continent theirs by the now obvious fiction of terra nullius – Latin legalese for ‘land belonging to no people’. The reader may enjoy separating the grains of truth from the chaff propaganda of Empire capitalism or racist / sectarian Christian bible dogma that was the self-serving mindset of the white land-takers. Batman and Fawkner’s land-hunting deals with local koori’s along with the re-emergence of the remarkable wild white castaway Buckley made their mark on the first settlement at Melbourne. The focus widens in 1836 with Surveyor-General Major Mitchell’s and his Wuradjuri guides ‘conquering the interior’ from the Murray near Mildura to the Western District at Portland and then back north-east across the state to the Murray upstream at Albury. His wheel tracks opened up Victoria from the north. First contact race interactions at Port Phillip and the notion of cultural-coexistence during the first five years leads to the role of ‘successful battler’ and publican Fawkner in the colonial invasion process from Kulin country to sheep-run to city. Sounding 1 then winds up with Melbourne’s first executions and descriptions of Port Phillip as the money melting pot forming the Melbourne hub of world capitalism. Twentieth century academic studies now identify native religion, language zones, tribal locations and clan heads at the time of dispossession by pirate capitalism. In describing the Australian land-rush the chapter echoes oscillate between history, sociology, race theory, trade and class wars, whaling and sealing, imperialism and the monopoly East India Company army mates all pitted against the ‘vanishing race’ of hunter-gathering ‘savages’. The dispossession was virtually complete in Victoria before the 1850’s gold rushes transformed the sheep-runs into banker’s dividend wealth for the ‘winners’. Sounding 2: DISPOSSESSION AT MELBOURNE: Sounding 2 unfolds gently with a wistful early Melbourne memoir involving Batman’s lost lawyer Gellibrand in 1836 but then we confront the frontier ‘kill or be killed’ point of necessity. The violent life, times and fate of mass murderer Fred Taylor who was first employed as overseer for banker Swanston’s Bellarine peninsula land-grab sets the local dispossession tone. Taylor’s repeated atrocities today exposes a credibility gap in Oz – between civilized progress and slaughter, that now looms over all else in Victoria’s birth as an independent state in 1851. The winter of 1837 saw the first violent death of a white squatter and his servant by ‘savage natives’ north-west of Williamstown at Mt Cotterell. Town leaders such as Fawkner and ‘police chief’ Henry Batman formed a posse that also included clan heads from both the Melbourne and Geelong tribal areas. Buckley refused to take part in the vigilante party and its punitive actions belied the humanitarian standards expressed in Batman’s treaty deed. This revenge slaughter and destruction of ‘villages’ by the white invaders forced the Sydney government to investigate and so began administering ‘law and order’ at Port Phillip. By 1838 Sydney trumped Batman’s land-grab and the penal government of NSW on the one hand executing eight ‘whites’ for killing what the newspapers called ‘savages’, while on the other hand providing sufficient speedy cavalry to tackle black resistance in Victoria at places such as west of Colac and near Benalla after the Faithfull massacre. The arrival in 1839 of first governor La Trobe and the Aboriginal Protectorate plan then unfolds the development of town civic structures while tribal life disintegrates. Government and private measures to ‘tame the naked Melbourne natives’ culminated with the dawn Merri Creek round-up in October 1840 of hundreds of Kulins by Major Lettsom’s redcoats and townsmen. This appears as the death blow to tribal life, and with the first shiploads of migrating British colonists arriving in 1841, near genocide for the Kulin, Mara, Kurnai and Murray River first-peoples.

The Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries aims at recording articles of scholarly value which relate to the history of the printed book, to the history of arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, and of the economic social and cultural environment, involved in its production, distribution, conservation and description.

26 expert contributions to this volumes discuss the manuscript book from a variety of angles: as physical object (manufacture, format, writing, and decoration), its purpose and readership, and as a vehicle for particular types of text (history, sermons, medical treatises, law and administration, music).

Following the format of Fitzroy Dearborn's highly successful International Dictionary of Historic Places and International Dictionary of University Histories, the International Dictionary of Library Histories provides basic information for each institution - location and holdings - followed by an extensive (1,000-5,000 word) essay on its history as well as a Further Reading list. In addition, the dictionary includes introductory articles on the history of various types of libraries and a library history in various regions of the world. The dictionary profiles more than 200 institutions from around the world, including the world's most important research libraries and other libraries with globally or regionally notable collections, innovative traditions, and significant and interesting histories. The essays take advantage of the growing scholarship of library history to provide insightful overviews of each institution, including not only the traditional values of these libraries but their innovations as well, such as developments in automated systems and electronic delivery. The profiles will emphasize the unique materials of research in these institutions - archives, manuscripts, personal and institutional papers. The introductory articles on types of libraries include topics ranging from theological libraries to prison libraries, from the ancient to the digital. An international team of more than 200 leading scholars in the field have contributed essays to the project.