NCB Collaborates with Museum of Australian Democracy

The National Centre of Biography has collaborated with the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in the production of a Timeline of Australian Democracy. The interactive Timeline table will be a key visitor experience at the new Museum, which opened on 9 May 2009, and a major element in a core exhibition: 'Australian Democracy: More than 2000 years in the making'. The new Museum of Australian Democracy is planning an online version of the Timeline, anticipated to be available in July 2009.

Visitors to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House will progress along a bank of interactive screens, divided into two-decade periods, and select from a menu of nine subjects:  Colonisation; Rule of law; Politics; Parliament; the Right to vote; Defence; International affairs; Freedoms; and Equal rights. When activated, each subject screen will present a text overview of the subject. Associated milestones will be displayed along the bottom of the screen. Suggestions for further reading will also be available in the online version.

Each of these milestones will have a description of the event and its significance. For example, for the year 1901, under the subject of Parliament, there will be a milestone, 'Commonwealth of Australia proclaimed', and a description of the proclamation ceremony and the establishment of the interim Federal administration. Key individuals associated with the milestone will be named in the text.

Visitors will be able to view a 50- to 60-word biographical sketch about each individual. The sketch will focus on the person’s role, actions, ideas and influence on the evolution of Australian democracy, and will add the essential human dimension to historical events, developments and movements.

Many major figures in the history of Australian democracy, named in the milestone descriptions, have articles in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Seventy-six of these articles have been condensed to extract the pertinent information and interpretation while preserving their style. Each sketch derived from the ADB has been identified as being from its author’s parent article. Sufficient details have been included in each reference to enable readers to find the full article, either in the ADB Online or in a volume not yet published on the Internet.

The individuals on whom sketches have been prepared from ADB articles include statesmen, such as Sir Henry Parkes and Sir Samuel Griffith; pioneer women in politics such as Edith Cowan and Dame Edith Lyons; Aboriginal leaders such as William Cooper and William Ferguson; and a wide range of other persons, among them Jessie Street, Vida Goldstein, William Charles Wentworth and Henry Bournes Higgins, whose vision and endeavours helped to shape Australian democracy.

As a result of this collaborative project, the ADB’s wealth of authoritative historical detail, scholarly analysis and engaging prose will be made available to thousands of visitors to the new Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. Concurrently, those visitors, through their experience of the Australian Democracy Timeline, will become acquainted with and be encouraged to read the full ADB articles for their further enlightenment and enjoyment.

by Darryl Bennet
* Darryl was the deputy General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography in 2002-08.  He was invited to condense the ADB entries for the biographical sketches used in the Museum of Australian Democracy’s ‘Timeline of Australian Democracy’.