Research skills
Define the task
Locate information
Essay writing skillsOriginal material online
You can search the pictures catalogue by going to the search window in the top right-hand corner of this site.
State and national libraries are now digitising rare and fragile documents and other printed material for online use.
Primary sources like these, which give first-hand accounts of what life was really like in the past, are valuable resources for any assignment. If used well, they will give your work a unique perspective.
The State Library of Victoria has digitised hundreds of thousands of photographs, posters, pamphlets, sheet music, paintings and manuscripts. Many of these relate to Victorian history, such as:
- Port Phillip Papers – letters and diaries from the first years of European settlement in Melbourne
- Victorian pamphlets – over 1500 full-text pamphlets covering over 200 years of Victorian history.
The Library's Pictures catalogue also contains over a million digitised photographs, paintings and objects. These, and other digitsed online materials, are a great resource that you can use in your assignments.
Finding Victorian pamphlets
Finding Victorian pamphlets
You can search for digitised pamphlets by typing ‘vicpamphlets’ into the State Library of Victoria’s main catalogue as a ‘keyword search anywhere’. If you use ‘construct a search’ and search for ‘vicpamphlets’ AND ‘Port Phillip’ you get fantastic primary sources, like:
1. A year's history of the settlement of Port Phillip in 1836: by Alfred Clarke http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/vicpamphlets/inter/966718.shtml
2. William Buckley: the wild white man, and his Port Phillip black friends /by James Bonwick.
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/vicpamphlets/inter/842440.shtml
3. The settlement of John Batman in Port Phillip
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/vicpamphlets/inter/204093.shtml]
Did you know?
The Explore history section of this site contains lots of quotes from a range of original sources, plus links to hundreds of documents and images that you can use in your assignments.
Women's Rights Movement in Victoria
The Brown-out Strangler
Yarra Bank Speaker's Forum
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