Author: HIT

The Heritage and New Horizons: Croatia and Croatians in a Global Context Conference was held in Sydney from 8 to 11 February 2024, organized by the Croatian Studies Foundation and Croatian Studies at Macquarie University, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Croatian Studies. At the conference, two presentations based on the work on the Croatian Emigrant Press project were held. Ana Barbarić held a presentation entitled Presentation and promotion of digitized library materials: an example of Australian Croatian newspapers, and Ivana Hebrang Grgić held a presentation entitled Researching Croatian publications in Australia: challenges of digitization. In addition to the presentation, Ivana Hebrang Grgić presented the exhibition They wrote in Glagolitic script at the conference…
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Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić were guests on the TV show Dobro jutro, Hrvatska (Good Morning, Croatia) on Croatian Television on December 22, 2023. They presented the book Their faraway home and talked about the research of Croatian publications in New Zealand.

The Dalmatian Archive and Museum,  which is part of the Dalmatian Cultural Society in Auckland, publishes a newsletter once a month. In December 2023, the news about the lecture about Croatian publication in New Zealand and about the exhibition They wrote in glagolitic script… was published. Also, an invitation was published, which tries to involve the community in finding the newspaper Glas istine, which was published at the beginning of the 20th century, but not a single issue has been preserved to this day. Inspired by the exhibition They wrote in Glagolitic… text Merry Christmass was  published in glagolitic script (in Croatian).

 

On December 8, 2023, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics held the colloquium Legacy in the Croatian language in New Zealand: language, culture, tradition. As part of the colloquium, an invited lecture was held entitled The written Croatian word in New Zealand: presentation of research results by authors Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić.

 

After the initial meeting in September 2022, the Croatian Archive of Australia from Sydney promoted its website. The aim of the Archive is to preserve records of the history of the Croatian community in Australia, and the web pages already offer important information about publications as well as some digitized material, for example photographs related to the history of Croats in Australia. The website launch took place on December 1, 2023. The news is published on the CroatiaWeek portal and in Hrvatski vjesnik (Croatian Herald).

Meetings were held in Sydney on November 28, 29 and 30 with representatives of the Croatian community. Research was conducted in several public and private libraries and information on ephemeral materials and gray literature related to Croats in Australia was found (which is in the focus of this year’s research as part of the Croatian Emigrant Press project). Based on this, a bibliography of manuals and instructions for Croatian immigrants to Australia will be created by the end of 2023 (about 150 records).

 

The exhibition They wrote in Glagolitic Script… was presented on November 25, 2023 at the Croatian Cultural Society in Wellington. Ivana Hebrang Grgić, the author of the exhibition, also held workshops with children and adults. Then the book Their faraway home was presented by Ivana Hebrang Grgić and Ana Barbarić. In the conversation with the members of the society, information was gathered about publications that are essential for the further upgrading of bibliographies as part of the Croatian Emigrant Press project.

 

On November 24, 2023, a meeting was held in Wellington with the New Zealand publisher of the book Their faraway home, Gareth St John Thomas, founder of Exisle Publishing. Details regarding the promotion of the book were agreed upon.

 

The library of the War Memorial Museum in Auckland was searched on 21 and 22 November 2023. The publication Dom i svijet (Home and the World) was found, which was published in two issues in 1932 in Perth, Australia. Until now, it was not known where the copies were kept. This copy (issue 1) is available in the library only recently because it arrived as part of a legacy from a private collection. The publication is significant for research into the history of publishing activities of Croats in Australia, but its discovery confirms the assumption of the Croatian Emigrant Press project that some of the lost publications are in private collections. Digitization of this and another publication has been agreed. Digitization will be carried out during 2024, and the publications will be available in the Croatian Emigrant Press repository.

 

 

 

 

 

In Kaitaia and Dargaville on November 19 and 20, meetings were held with members of Dalmatian clubs. The book Their faraway home was presented to them, and in the conversation parts of the research related to these towns were highlighted. In particular, they discussed the possibilities of researching and finding lost publications – for example, the newspaper Glas istine, which is known to have been published in Dargaville at the beginning of the 20th century, but not a single copy has been found to date. In addition to the talks, a visit to the Gumdiggers Park was also organized, where there is a reconstruction of the settlements where the first settlers from Croatia lived in New Zealand. In the museum shop, publications and semi-publications related to Croats were found. The semi-publication The Gumfield Collection: 100 years on: looking back 1898-1940 from 2015 is particularly interesting, on the basis of which a book of the same title was published in 2018, and later (2018 and 2023) the book The Gumfields: Northern Wairoa to the Far North: 120 years on: looking back.