Companion to Tasmanian History

The Companion to Tasmanian History was originally published as a book in 2005 by the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies at the University of Tasmania. It aimed within a single volume to provide information about every important aspect of Tasmania's history, covering all periods and all places. The articles were written by no less than 418 experienced historians and other experts.

The Companion was written in plain words for the benefit of school students and the general public, as well as historians and scholars - indeed, anyone with an interest in the history of the island.

The book version of the Companion contained 1073 articles, ranging in length from 125 to 1500 words. It also featured eighteenth thematic essays focused on major aspects of Tasmanian history.

About this Online Edition of the Companion

This online edition was created by Paul Turnbull, Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Tasmania, with the assistance of Dr. Owen Powell. It reproduces the text of the 2005 print edition of the Companion, with some corrections of typographical errors and minor errors of fact.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Colonialism and Its Aftermath (CAIA).

CAIA is an interdisciplinary research centre based at the University of Tasmania. It provides a forum for teaching, research, and scholarship in the fields of colonial and postcolonial studies, and facilitates interaction with the local community as well as with heritage and tourism industries.

The Centre for Tasmanian History aimed to produce a CD-Rom version of the Companion within a year of its print publication. However, this proved impractical, and it was decided to offer the Companion text and images online in HTML format via the Library of the University of Tasmania.

This online version of the Companion takes advantage of advances in cultural informatics since 2005. It has been created using the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a context based resource discovery and access system that links creators, archival and heritage resources and published materials within the one system.

Users of this version of the Companion will find that it does not reproduce the images and maps included in the print edition. Rather, it provides hyperlinks to online versions of these materials, which in many instances are of higher quality than appeared in print.

The OHRM has been used in numerous research-based digital projects by Australian scholars since the late 1990s. Originally designed by Joanne Evans and Gavan McCarthy, the OHRM has since been developed by researchers at Melbourne University's eScholarship Research Centre (formerly the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre).

The OHRM is freely available from the eScholarship Research Centre.

Paul Turnbull
School of Humanities
The University of Tasmania

September 10, 2017