Reconstructing changes in the Great Barrier Reef - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 21

of the Great Barrier Reef goes beyond the scope of my research, although there is
considerable potential for further research in that area.
Collection of documentary data
Documentary data collection involved searching for and analysing historical
topics, leaflets, Queensland Government reports and records, newspapers and
manuscripts. My search procedure used various strategies: a system of pre-defined
search terms used with electronic catalogues; electronic searches of relevant
call numbers to locate clusters of similar works; manual searches of index card
catalogues; and consultation with professional librarians, curators and archivists.
The documentary materials used, assembled together, provided a broad range of
textual sources for analysis (Travers, 2001). The use of many types of documentary
sources allowed for their cross-referencing and cross-validation, and these
revealed differences in perceptions of environmental changes between authors.
Some examples of those differences are evident in the narrative that follows.
Moreover, the distinctive nature of each documentary source, and the need to use
methods that adapt to the peculiarities of each source, have been acknowledged by
Hakim (1987); for example, newspaper reports about the impacts of commercial
dugong fishing required more cautious interpretation than the Queensland
Government reports about that industry. My documentary data included a subset
of data obtained from visual representations, which are described separately. The
methods of data collection used for each type of document are described below.
Books
Historical books were located in the following collections: the NLA, JOL,
Mitchell Library, Fryer Library, SLQ, SLNSW, JCU Library, GBRMPA Library,
Cairns City Library and Townsville City Library. Several hundred historical
books were identified using electronic and manual search techniques. Those
works were then analysed for observations relating to the condition of, or
changes in, the Great Barrier Reef. The historical books consulted were divided
into four main categories: records of early European explorers, scientific texts of
the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland description and travel literature, and works
of fiction.
The records of many early European explorers of the Queensland coast
and the Great Barrier Reef have been published in book (or microfilm) form.
The records of the earliest British exploration of the Great Barrier Reef, made
aboard HMS Endeavour in 1770, were redacted and published in the journals
and maps of Captain James Cook and of Joseph Banks. Material contained in
the journals of other explorers, including Bligh, King, Stokes, Flinders, Huxley,
Wickham, Bunker, Owens and Stanley also describes the north-eastern coast of
Australia. Histories of early European exploration of Australia (Gill, 1988) and
of shipwrecks in the Great Barrier Reef (Holthouse, 1976) were also consulted.