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of direct light, so that they could be properly preserved. Once finished being used, textbooks
from private collections were stored in archive boxes, sourced from the State Library of
Queensland. As some of the textbooks had started growing mould due to inappropriate
housing by past owners (for example, 1913 Queensland Readers), it was even more
important to ensure that these were kept in an environment where the air was at a stable
temperature and humidity level. When being used, the textbooks are taken from the shelf one
at a time and not stacked on top of each other.
Other principles observed include: no writing on artefacts, only HB lead pencil used in the
vicinity of artefacts, post-it-notes and other glue-like substances prohibited from artefacts,
artefacts used only on a cleared desk or table, resting or pressing of writing note pads on
artefacts prohibited, books kept closed when not in use for an extended period of time, pages
turned from the top right hand corner, and when requiring repair only acid free paper and
archival quality materials have been used. The careful handling of the primary source
documents ensures that they are kept in as good a condition as possible, preserved for future
use, research and enjoyment. An additional point to make about the quality of the books used
in this project, is that due to the age and poor condition of some of them, poor quality scans
of texts and images have resulted on occasion. Therefore, how they appear in this dissertation
is impacted on the quality (or lack thereof) of the original source.
3.8.2 Textbook selection.
Although it was anticipated that there would be a paucity of textbooks for the eras prior to
and immediately post WWI and the 1960s, this did not turn out to be the case. Whilst locating
school documents for the WWI era proved to be difficult, the 1960s was not difficult at all,
resulting in an oversupply. The 1980s era also had an abundant supply of textbooks. Given
the 1980s is so recent, it was not anticipated that there would be difficulty locating these
books, with many of them still on library shelves. With the oversupply of textbooks for two
of the three eras, careful selection needed to take place in order to ensure that a representative
sample was included, rather than a pot luck process of selection. An annotated bibliography
with clear categories acting as criteria for textbook selection was established to facilitate this.
Each textbook has been entered into this catalogue enabling an evidence-based process of
selection for inclusion. An extract from this catalogue can be viewed in Appendix B.
Categories defined in the textbook catalogue include:
• Year of publication;
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