Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union early 20th century called themselves 'oologists', though the distinction between the notionally scientific discipline of oology and simple egg-collecting was blurred. Identification of any but the most common and distinctive species usually entailed the collection of specimens to be made into study skins. Modern field-guides did not exist and few people could afford the massive multi-volume, lavishly illustrated, handbooks of John Gould and Gregory Mathews. However, both Archibald J. Campbell and Alfred North had produced comprehensive guides to what was known about the nests and eggs of Australian birds, with illustrations of the eggs rather than of the birds themselves,
What Is History? and were instead products of their own places and times, which in turn decided what "facts of the past" they determined into "facts of history". British historian Richard J. Evans said "What Is History?" caused a revolution in British historiography in the 1960s. Australian historian Keith Windschuttle, a critic of Carr, said "What Is History?" is one of the most influential books written about historiography, and that very few historians working in the English language since the 1960s had not read it. What Is History? What Is History? is a study that was written by the English historian E. H.