This is a notably ambitious attempt to provide an up‐to‐date, introductory bibliography in one volume ranging from tiny Pacific islands such as Nauru and Niue to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, and to Australia, a continent almost as great in area as the USA. All of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia are included, excepting only Hawaii. This increasingly integrated region covered by Australian librarian John Thawley’s unannotated bibliography is geographically vast and culturally, economically, and politically diverse.
The relevant literature is immense in quantity. Exceptionally rigorous selection of entries has confined the volume to its manageable size of just over 600 pages, with 5,918 references. Thawley has had a truly perplexing problem as to what to include and what, perforce, to exclude. Exclusions are, inevitably, numerous. His choices strike me as generally wise and readily acceptable, for the main components of his bibliography: The South Pacific (items 1‐610); Australia (items 611‐3,046); Papua New Guinea (items 3,357‐4,035); New Zealand (items 4,727‐5,681). The selection and coverage in these sections are really excellent, above all those for Australia (quite the best bibliography of that country that I have seen in recent years).
All the main regional sections are comprehensively and minutely subdivided by subject; the lesser sections, such as Micronesia, by island and then by subject. This analytical process is thorough. Under Australia, for instance, we have the rubric “Political leaders” further divided for Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam. The rubric “Immigration” is subdivided for Afghans, Americans, Asians, Austrians, Belgians, British, Croats, Czechs, Dutch, French, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Irish, Italians, Jews, Latvians, Lebanese, Macedonians, Maltese, Muslims, Poles, Refugees, Scandinavians, Scottish, Spanish, Swiss, Vietnamese! Thawley overlooks the considerable literature on Lithuanian immigrants, especially in South Australia, on the Welsh diaspora, and several important works on Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians in Australia.
The vast majority of the references are to books in English published in the past half century, with a leaven of works in French. To compensate for the paucity of references to journal articles, Thawley has taken great care to include relevant indexes to and bibliographies of such source material, for each major region and (where they exist) for individual countries. Subject headings generally follow those adopted by the Library of Congress, and are applied consistently throughout the bibliography, thereby facilitating comparative studies. The thorough Author Index includes all authors, editors, compilers and other individuals mentioned in the entries. Works listed in the bibliography under title are included in the index under that title, in alphabetical sequence. Cross‐referencing is by “see also” references to item numbers, and is adequate though not quite as thorough as might be.
Thawley is, clearly, intimately familiar with all major works on Australian subjects, and his selections are generally admirable and genuinely useful for layman and researcher alike. His selections for the sizeable general section on the South Pacific, for Papua New Guinea, and for New Zealand are of similar quality and utility, reflecting direct experience. Selection of items relating to the 23 smaller island states is less sure, more haphazard, and certainly less knowledgeable. Here, there are many omissions of consequence. A section on the Samoan language without any mention of G.B. Milner’s seminal Samoan Dictionary (1966) is remiss, if not wholly reprehensible. Equally so, Maori language without Bruce Biggs. Hiram Bingham Jr, Ernest Sabatier, T. Reid Cowell, H.G.A. Hughes, and Stephen Trussel are among the authors of works on the Gilbertese language missing from “Kiribati‐Language”.
To prolong this list of absentees would be pointlessly unkind, as Thawley does warn his readers that space considerations enforced exclusion of many significant works. Errors are few (Sebeck in item 425 should be Sebeok). A very useful innovation is the list of 26 computer databases, all Australian but for Index New Zealand via Kiwinet. “Journals” lists 38 major journals relating to Australasia and the South Pacific.
The virtues of John Thawley’s painstaking bibliography far outweigh its few shortcomings. It is an intelligent, competent, and remarkably wide‐ranging compilation which students of Australasia and the South Pacific Islands will find of real service and value as a first guide to a dauntingly extensive and widely scattered specialist literature. It is warmly recommended to all reference libraries.
