 First edition of volume 1 | |
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Subject | Biographies of notable Australians |
| Genre | Encyclopedia |
| Published | Carlton, Victoria |
| Publisher | Melbourne University Press |
Publication date | 1966–2021 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type |
|
| ISBN | 978-0-522-84459-7 |
| OCLC | 70677943 |
| Website | adb |
TheAustralian Dictionary of Biography (ADB orAuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by theAustralian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people inAustralia'shistory. Initially published by Melbourne University Press in a series of twelve hard-copy volumes between 1966 and 2005, the dictionary has been published online since 2006 by theNational Centre of Biography (NCB) at ANU, which has also publishedObituaries Australia (OA) since 2010.
The ADB project began operating in 1957,[1] although preparation work had been started in about 1954 at the Australian National University. An index was created that would be the basis of the ADB.Pat Wardle was involved in the work and, in time, she herself was included in the ADB.[2] Staff are located at the National Centre of Biography in the History Department of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Since its inception, 4,000 authors have contributed to the ADB and its published volumes contain 9,800 scholarly articles on 12,000 individuals.[1] Only 210 of them areIndigenous, an imbalance which can be equated with what the anthropologistBill Stanner has called the white “cult of forgetfulness" about Indigenous achievements.[3]
The ADB project should not be confused with the much smaller and olderDictionary of Australian Biography byPercival Serle, first published in 1949, nor with the GermanAllgemeine Deutsche Biographie (published 1875–1912) which may also be referred to as ADB in English sources.[4] Another similar Australian title from an earlier era wasPhilip Mennell'sDictionary of Australasian Biography (1892).
Since the project began there have been six general editors as of 2021[update], namely:[5]
To date, the ADB has produced 19hardcopy volumes of biographical articles on important and representative figures inAustralian history, published byMelbourne University Press. In addition to publishing these works, the ADB makes its primary research material available to the academic community and the public.
| Volume(s) | Years published | Subjects covered |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | 1966–67 | Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1788–1850 |
| 3 to 6 | 1969–76 | Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1851–1890 |
| 7 to 12 | 1979–90 | Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1891–1939 |
| 13 to 16 | 1993–2002 | Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1940–1980 |
| 17 and 18 | 2007–2012 | Covered those Australians who died between 1981 and 1990 |
| 19 | 2021 | Covered those Australians who died between 1991 and 1995 |
| Supplement | 2005 | Dealt with those Australians not covered by the original volumes |
| Index | 1991 | Index for Volumes 1 to 12 |
Two supplementary volumes were published as a by-product of the first 12 volumes of theADB. These areA Biographical Register, 1788–1939: Notes from the Name Index of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1987) in two volumes. These contain biographical notes on another 8,100 individuals not included in theADB. Each entry contains brief notes on the individual concerned, gives sources, lists cross-references between entries and theADB and there is an occupation index at the end of volume II.
On 6 July 2006, the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online was launched byMichael Jeffery,Governor-General of Australia, and received a Manning Clark National Cultural Award in December 2006.[6] The website is a joint production of the ADB and theAustralian Science and Technology Heritage Centre,University of Melbourne (Austehc).
Obituaries Australia (OA), a digital repository of digital obituaries about significant Australians, went live in August 2010, after operating as an in-house database for some time, usingCanberra Times journalist and deputy editorJohn Farquharson's obituaries for its pilot. The National Centre of Biography encouraged the public to send in scanned copies of obituaries and other biographical material.[7]
The fully searchable database also links the obituaries to important digitised records such as war service records,ASIO files andoral history interviews, in libraries, archives and museums. and will link to a search on the name inTrove, theNational Library of Australia's database of newspapers, library catalogue holdings, government gazettes and other material.[7]
The database comprises obituaries about "anyone who has made a contribution to Australian life"; some have not even visited Australia but had political or business connections and interests. There are links between ADB and AO on each entry where articles exist on both databases.[8]
In 2018,Clinton Fernandes wrote that ADB is conspicuously silent on the slaveholder or slave profiting pasts of a number of influential figures in the development of Australia, includingGeorge Fife Angas, Isaac Currie,Archibald Paull Burt,Charles Edward Bright, Alexander Kenneth Mackenzie,Robert Allwood,Lachlan Macquarie, Donald Charles Cameron, John Buhot,John Belisario, Alfred Langhorne, John Samuel August, andGodfrey Downes Carter.[9][10] The NCB subsequently launched itsLegacies of Slavery project, which aims to expand coverage of people who had links to British slavery.[11]
