As access to the Internet has evolved from the specialised to the routine, so have students and researchers become less likely to consult works that appear only in print. Numerous scientific reports earlier than about 2000, when digitisation became mainstream, are no longer readily accessible because the entire scholarly and research community has adapted to finding resources online.
On this page we will re-publish scanned works that come our way.
A leaflet published for the dedication ceremony for the University of Queensland in 1909.
The Australian Flora by John Shirley, a leaflet on behalf of the Education Department. Other works by John Shirley are listed in the State Library’s catalogue with dates of about 1890s -1917.
Works such as F. Manson Bailey‘s Descriptive Catalogue of Queensland’s Grasses, 1899. Yes, his taxonomy has been superseded by botanists in subsequent decades, but his observations on the ability of the pastoral country to take rapid advantage of rain has completely contemporary salience.
The late Ray Specht delivered the Romeo Lahey lecture in 1978 on behalf of the National Parks Association of Queensland. Titled In Wildness is the Preservation of the World, it offers a clear insight into Prof Specht’s scholarship as well as some thoroughly modern lessons about the value of wild places.
First Studies of Insect Life in Australasia dates from 1904.
Principles of Botany for Queensland Farmers, C.T. White Government Botanist, 1938, published by the Department of Agriculture and Stock. (79 MB).
Notes on Collecting and Mounting Insects by A.N. Burns, Curator of Insects at the National Museum, Melbourne, 1964.