Highly Recommended WORD-BASED Historical Sources
to Support and Inspire Accurate, Creative and Engaging Research, Writing or
Other Modes of Presenting Australia’s History
Rosalie Triolo
2025
arboryglyphs (word-carvings on trees)
advertisements
autobiographies
autograph books
badges (the words on them)
banking documents
banners
bibles (religious text, and family details on inside covers)
biographies (and auto-biographies)
births, deaths and marriages documents
blogs
blurbs (on or about books)
bookplates
buttons (words on them)
business or company records
cables
captions (art, museum objects, etc)
carvings (ie, words on objects)
catalogues (sales, exhibitions …)
cemetery records
census data
club newsletters
colloquial expressions and proverbs
contents lists
cookbooks
council land, property and rate records/titles and indexes / valuation or assessment rolls
court transcripts
curriculum documents (old documents can be excellent time-capsules of a time, but ‘new’ can also provide leads as modern writers, such as for current ‘best language’ and emphases)
diaries
directories, eg Sands & McDougall’s
editorials
electoral rolls
emails
envelopes (words on them)
eulogies
film credits
ghost signs
government gazettes
graffiti
gravestone inscriptions
guestbooks
heraldry (family crests/shields – the words on them)
histories (published by others)
honour boards, rolls or books
hymns
identity cards
indexes
inquests
instruction manuals
invitations
jingles (scripts)
journals (people’s reminiscences of phases in their lives, as well as research articles, old and new)
labels (eg on food products, museum objects, their dates – the chosen ‘titles’ and any words or numbers)
legal records
leaflets or pamphlets
letters, to / from all sorts of writers
letters to the editor
logos (and words within)
magazines
manifestos
medals (the words on them)
medical records
menus
minutes of meetings
monuments (with inscriptions)
newspapers
novels (well-written, well-researched historical fiction by authors with reputation)
nursery rhymes
obituaries
orders of service
packaging
parish records
parliamentary debates
passports
patents
place-names
plaques
playscripts
poems, haiku, limericks, jokes
postcards (words on back and front)
posters (words on them)
prescriptions
programs (for events)
public notices
quotes
receipts
recipes
religious texts
school/education records
schoolyard rhymes and songs (eg words of skipping songs)
service records
shopping lists
signs
slogans
social media (many sorts – the words within)
song lyrics
stamps (words on them)
street names
speeches (transcripts)
telegrams
telephone books
textbooks (‘old’ as time-capsules of a time – what was being taught/learned)
tickets
timetables
trophy text
unpublished manuscripts (personal, or others’ scholarly MAs, PhDs)
visitors’ books
websites
Wills