The Australian Women's Register

Summary

An outcome of an International Women’s Year National Research Program project, Women in Australia: An annotated guide to records is a major publication that documents sources relating to the study of women in Australia. Initially given a life of six months, the project employed eighteen research assistants from around the nation who undertook to locate and document existing material and to identify gaps in the record that could be supplemented through an extensive oral history program. Kay Daniels, Mary Murnane and Anne Picot edited the collection.

The publication functions as much more than a list of what it available. It adds value by describing what exists in each collection, including collections that are not obviously ‘women’s papers’, suggests how they might be used and where researchers might look for further information about particular people, organisations and historical problems.

This two-volume guide put paid to the myth that women’s histories couldn’t be written because there were no records. Never a guide to all the available records, it was, nevertheless, a starting point for research and information exchange.