ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 70 | August 2004
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New Online Website: Discovering the South Seas
South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific (17601800), a multimedia online companion to Captain James Cooks first Pacific voyage of discovery (176871), was launched on 20 July 2004. The launch was part of the recent David Nichol Smith Conference held at the National Library of Australia. The website, which is hosted by the National Library, is an information resource for the history of European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific between 1760 and 1800. In this first phase of its development, the site includes the full text of James Cooks Endeavour Journal, held by the National Library, as well as the full texts of journals kept by Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson on the voyage. Voyaging maps, cultural atlases, indigenous histories and a South Seas Companion are included on the site, helping users to discover the Librarys collection of historical images and rare maps relating to eighteenth-century voyaging in Australian and Pacific seas. The diverse range of material accessible through South Seas also encourages the exploration of relationships between different types of historical evidence. The South Seas project was conceived in 1999 as a collaborative research venture. The project has been undertaken by Paul Turnbull, Professor of History at James Cook University and formerly Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (CCCR), and Chris Blackall, Senior Research Associate at the CCCR. Support has been provided by the CCCR, the National Library, and James Cook University, and the project received funding over three years from the Australian Research Council (ARC), through its Strategic Partnership with Industry: Research and Training Program. The Library has contributed to South Seas in a number of ways, including through the digitisation of material, developing policy and processes to support cataloguing and digitisation activities, building the first stage of a digital book delivery system to allow images from books to be delivered in sequence and context, and providing design and infrastructure support for the website. Perhaps most importantly, the project has offered an opportunity for the Library to work closely with the academic community to make some of our important historical materials available in new ways to new users. The South Seas website will be managed and developed by the Library. It will be the vehicle for making more of our collections relating to the history of Pacific exploration available in digital form and also for publishing relevant scholarly writings and research online. Collaboration with other cultural agencies will also be pursued. Following the launch of the site last month, the Library will establish an editorial board to guide future development of the site. The South Seas website can be found at <http://southseas.nla.gov.au/>. The Library contact for the project and website is Pam Gatenby, Assistant Director-General, Collections Management Division (pgatenby@nla.gov.au). |
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