NRS-19745 | Papers from the committee for the printing of the Records of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)

Full description

This series consists of papers, correspondence, notes and minutes from the committee on the printing of Records of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914. The committee was appointed by New South Wales Premier W.A. Holman and held its first meeting on 19 June 1919. On 3 March 1920 the leader of the expedition, Sir Douglas Mawson, entered into an agreement with the State of New South Wales to confer with the Committee regarding his proposal to hand over the relics and specimens collected by the expedition to the Committee for distribution to and documentation by scientific institutions in exchange for the State undertaking the printing of the records.

The committee, appointed in 1919, consisted of William Applegate Gullick (Chairman, Government Printer), William Herbert Ifould (Principal Librarian, Public Library of New South Wales) and Charles Hedley (Acting Curator, Australian Museum). The printing of the records extended over a period of 28 years, finishing in August 1948 by which time the committee consisted of Thomas Henry Tennant (Chairman, Government Printer), John Wallace Metcalfe (Principal Librarian, Public Library of New South Wales) and Edward Alfred Briggs D.Sc. (Sydney University).

The initial minutes of the committee are handwritten in a minute book while later minutes have been typed. The handwritten minutes cover the period between 19 June 1919 and 10 November 1922 while the typed minutes date from 30 June 1931 to 13 October 1932. The minutes document who was in attendance at each meeting, the location of the meeting and the items discussed. The minutes for the committee on printing of Records of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 begin on page 70 of the minute book. It should be noted that the minutes at the beginning of the minute book appear to be minutes from an unrelated committee convened over four months in 1917.

Contained within the series is a large amount of correspondence between the committee and Sir Douglas Mawson. This correspondence documents the progress of the records and any disagreements or problems occurring during the publishing process. Two major problems appear to be budgetary issues with the State government calling upon financial assistance from the Commonwealth in the form of a Commonwealth grant and the issue of copyright with some of the text being used by Mawson in the narrative part of the Records already having been published through another publishing house in Mawson's book 'The Home of the Blizzard'.

Details of 'relics' received, botanical specimens received and zoological specimens received by various scientific institutions can be found in the papers, including a full list of relics delivered to the Australian Museum. There is also a large amount of correspondence in relation to subscriptions to the reports, to copyright, distribution, and orders/receipts of the records from foreign institutions.

Also contained within the series is correspondence from Mawson regarding which scientists from around the world have been chosen to describe and report on the specimens brought back from the 1911-14 expedition; here Mawson lists the scientist, the institution the scientist is from and the collection they will be working on.

Several proof copies (differing versions) of the Prospectus of Publications from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-14, can also be found in this series. The Prospectus outlines the content of the Records and the cost of each volume or a subscription to receive all Records of the expedition. Corrections and updates have been handwritten or pasted over the top of the printed text within the Prospectus. Also included among the correspondence and papers is an original scientific drawing of an Antarctopria latigaster.

The files, papers and minutes have not been arranged in any discernable order. The series includes bound volumes, correspondence files that have been numbered and arranged in date order, subject files containing papers and correspondence related to a particular topic and loose papers. Please note that one of the related series, NRS 12169, contains the two files missing from the run of numbered files in this series. These are file No.1 and file No.6.

The resulting records produced by the Committee consisted of 3 publication series and multiple volumes within each series:

Series A, volumes I-V (Geology)
Series B, volumes I-V (Meteorology)
Series C, volumes I-X (Zoology and Botany).