Reconstructing changes in the Great Barrier Reef - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 19

Table 2.3 Some o ral sources relating to the Great Barrier Reef
Source

Types of material Location

Pre-existing
oral histories

Audio cassettes
Interview transcripts
Interview recording notes

Oral history collection, National
Library of Australia, Canberra
Oral history collection, School of
History, James Cook University,
Townsville

Original oral
histories

Audio cassettes
Interview transcripts
Interview recording notes
Interview schedules

Collected at various locations in
Australia, and by telephone

Anecdotal
comments

Memos
Field notes

Collected at various locations in
Australia, and by telephone

Source: Author

valid and valuable source of historical information, as oral tradition and formal
history complement one another'. Ganter (1994, pp11-12), likewise, argued that
written, visual and oral sources may be equally useful - and equally problematic.
Oral sources offer unique opportunities to investigate human perceptions, beliefs,
feelings, intentions and memories: they can be used to explore those experiences
in depth and detail. Oral evidence comprises both specially-collected, original
interviews with key informants and pre-existing materials that are available for
re-interrogation. Both original and pre-existing oral histories were used in my
research: those sources are summarised i n Table 2.3.
Major sources of data relating to the Great Barrier Reef are the collections
of the following Australian institutions: GBRMPA (Townsville), the Australian
Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) (Townsville), the National Library of
Australia (NLA) (Canberra), ScreenSound Australia (the National Screen
and Sound Archive) (Canberra) and the Australian Museum (Sydney). Those
institutions contain much of the scientific literature of the Great Barrier Reef
and also certain specialist oral history, photographic and film collections. The
major state libraries containing sources relevant to the Great Barrier Reef include
the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) (Brisbane) and the State Library of New
South Wales (SLNSW) (Sydney). They hold collections of maps and films
about the Great Barrier Reef. Historical libraries include the John Oxley Library
(JOL) (Brisbane), the Mitchell Library (Sydney) and the Fryer Library of the
University of Queensland (Brisbane). Those libraries hold specialist historical
collections including many topics, leaflets and photographs. Other relevant
libraries include the University of Queensland Library (Brisbane), the James
Cook University (JCU) Library (Cairns and Townsville), the Cairns City Library
and the Townsville City Library.
Other than in libraries, qualitative sources are held in the offices of the QEPA
(Brisbane) and in the QSA. The latter holds Queensland Government records,
catalogued by provenance, after files have been transferred from departmental