Bibliographical Notes for The Press in Australia and Related Subjects

These Notes are pretty haphazard and do not meet the minimum standards of a bibliography or even of a checklist. They are the by-product of my book, The Press in Australia (Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1964). They consist largely of a listing of material I read in doing research on this book, supplemented by some entries which are taken from the results of a questionnaire sent to all metropolitan newspapers. I would like to thank the editors and librarians who furnished entries. The bulk of the book deals with 20th Century Australian metropolitan dailies. I began by making a survey of existing book and pamphlets on these, and in this field the Notes are most complete. For my historical chapter, which deals with some aspects of our 19th Century press, I did three main things: First, I sampled a cross section of dailies in 25 year periods. Second, I checked all books which were subject-indexed in the Mitchell catalogue. The entries for these, in fuller and more precise form, are given in the Notes. Third, I was faced with the problem of how to get [at] primary sources without consulting either manuscripts or Government documents. After spending some weeks on both, I decided that a thorough search would take up too much time relative to my short chapter. I hence switched to making a systematic check of 100 journal and magazine titles. The Mitchell catalogue lists some of them by states, but its selection is very incomplete. As it would have been folly to go through the whole catalogue, I began by checking all promising periodicals mentioned in Frank S. Greenop's History of Magazine Publishing in Australia, and all titles mentioned in H.M. Green's A History of Australian Literature. These were supplemented by entries from Ferguson's bibliography and by a check under likely titles in the catalogue, e.g. "Australian ...", "Sydney ...", "Colonial ..." etc. The periodicals often had references to their contemporaries, which were also used. This gave me a rough-and-ready list, which met two essential requirements: It covered a long period, and it contained periodicals from all states. I recognize, of course, that this was not a systematic sampling AƒÂƒA‚¢AƒÂ‚A¢Â‚¬AƒÂ‚A¢Â€Âœ but in order to draw a sample one would have needed a complete bibliography of titles. The period of checking depended on the length of the run, and the apparent promise of the periodical. The material was then supplemented by consulting The Bulletin Index, 1880-90. The entries given here are a selection from that index, and include only the longer and more informative pieces. As usual, the scope of the book as published is much narrower than its scope at first conceived. I have included entries on a number of subjects marginal to the daily metropolitan press, but of course these are very incomplete. So far as location is concerned, nearly all the books and most of the periodicals mentioned are in the Mitchell Library. But the Library does not contain some of the "House Organs" and "Cadet" papers mentioned. It is rather spotty so far as pamphlets are concerned, and perhaps 10-20% of the pamphlets mentioned here are not in the Mitchell. Apart from the Mitchell, I also checked the catalogues of the State Public Library of Victoria and of the National Library of Australia. My book contains some material based on semi-confidential surveys conducted by Anderson Analysis etc. These reports have not been included here, as they do not seem to be in any Public Library.