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A National and International Trend

Historical Encyclopedias and Historical Companions are emerging in other states of Australia. The highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to Australian History was published in 1998. The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History, published at the end of 2001, has also met with an enthusiastic response. Clearly there is a strong demand amongst both the academic community and the general educated public for such works.

A team of historians has recently completed the Encyclopedia of Melbourne, published at the end of 2005. This includes an innovative web site that is presently under construction. Most recently it has been announced that work will soon commence on an historical encyclopedia of Sydney. And, prompted by the exciting $NZ 12.1 million on-line Encyclopedia of New Zealand now under construction, a team of Australian academics has begun discussions about the development of an Encyclopedia of Australia.

Encyclopedias have been published in Britain, Europe and America for centuries. But the recent historical encyclopedia movement in the United States is remarkable. The ground-breaking Encyclopedia of New York City published by Yale University Press in 1995, provided an impetus. Historical encyclopedias have been developed for Utah, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Chicago, New York State and New Jersey in association with scholarly presses. Many of these are now going on-line.

These developments all provide exciting models for this project showing that Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia will be at the forefront of contemporary historical trends.