The Louis Goldberg Collection at Deakin University: exploring a rich foundation for historical research

The late Louis Goldberg is widely regarded as a prominent founder of accounting academe in Australia. Throughout a distinguished career spanning six decades, (Emeritus Professor) Goldberg amassed a vast collection of letters, books, articles and other material on accounting and related fields, as well as material in other, non-related fields including poetry, philosophy and fiction. Goldberg's collection, reflecting a lifetime of scholarly endeavour, is now in the public domain, located at Deakin University's Waterfront Campus, Geelong, Australia, where it is being conserved. The primary objective of this paper is to explore the potential of the Goldberg collection for use by present and future scholars of history. To provide the principal framework for the study, the categorisation of historical research approaches developed by Carnegie and Napier (1996) and applied by Carnegie and Potter (2000) is used. The central theme of this paper is that the conservation of this unique collection will benefit scholars from around the world with an interest in accounting, business and economic history and related fields for many years to come.