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this site has proven to be a useful way to locate textbooks that
otherwise could not have been sourced. This has been the experience
particularly for textbooks published in the early to mid 20 th century.
• A search of catalogues has shown that suitable texts are stored in special collections
held by university and public libraries such as the John Oxley Library at the State
Library of Queensland, and the Australian National Library in Canberra, ACT.
o These libraries were accessed for primary source materials, and a good level
of success was experienced overall, particularly the National Library for early
20 th century textbooks.
A collection of primary source documents were sourced at the Education Queensland library
and permission was sought and granted by the history Librarian to access these documents. A
difficulty that was faced is that the collection has not been catalogued since the early 1980s,
and many of the catalogued items were no longer on the shelves as indicated in the catalogue,
due to having been moved several times, resulting in some being lost and others difficult to
find. The difficulty here is that it took a considerable amount of time to locate such
documents in the library and excessively strict rules (not experienced elsewhere) regarding
visiting the library and accessing resources were required to be observed. This is
understandable given the purpose of the library is for school teachers and the delicate state of
the textbooks and other Education Department documents.
A difficulty that needed consideration was how to deal with the handling of old and delicate
primary source documents, such as school texts, Education Department reports and
syllabuses. The need to consider handling of documents extended to sources held in libraries
and private collections. The approach taken to this difficulty is in accordance with general
principles of compliance when dealing with historical artefacts. This includes following the
directions of the librarians responsible for particular collections, which include the wearing of
white gloves, not having food or beverages near the artefacts, only viewing the artefacts in
allocated viewing areas, not photocopying or scanning delicate documents and other
regulations as they arose throughout the research. Texts which have been sourced and are
now part of the personal collection used for this research are also treated according to the
general principles of good practice of handling historical sources, which also includes
appropriate housing of documents. In this case, the textbooks were at first kept in compactors
in an air-conditioned room and later moved to a darkened room on book shelves, always out
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