Studies and sources

Directories old and new and of various kinds offer information about booksellers, and their businesses, not least in their advertising sections. Dedicated directories of sections of the trade are Norwood (1989), also B.R. Howes, Book Dealers in Australia and New Zealand (1987- ). Archive materials must be sought in the many repositories—there is no general guide devoted especially to trade sources. The Hocken Library, Dunedin, for instance holds an important collection of Newbold's archives and the papers of its proprietor Dick White. General dictionaries of biography include some booksellers: for instance the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.3, includes articles on A.H. Reed and B. Whitcombe. The forthcoming Southern People: A Dictionary of Otago-Southland Biography, ed. Jane Thomson, is to include short lives of both White and Joseph Braithwaite, the prominent Dunedin bookseller. (David McDonald of the Hocken Library is working on a fuller study of Braithwaite.) Information may be culled from trade periodicals, such as New Zealand Bookseller & Publisher and Book Trade Monthly. Individual booksellers also may issue their own publicity material, or even something more ambitious, such as Parsons Packet, issued 1947-55 by Roy Parsons of Parsons Bookshop, 126 Lambton Quay, Wellington. Parsons Packet (1984) is a selection of articles from that periodical. Further information on book auctions, and secondhand and antiquarian bookshops is given later in this chapter under 'Book collecting'.

Specific sources include: Minutes of the Associated Booksellers of New Zealand/New Zealand Bookseller Association 1922-69, which are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Minutes of Booksellers Association of New Zealand/Booksellers New Zealand 1969-91, which are held by the Association in Book House, Wellington; Book trade journals, which include NZ Bookseller & Publisher, New Zealand Book World, Book Trade Monthly, and Booksellers News.