Presented here is the systematic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) imaging study of extragalactic radio sources with z<0.06, 
greater than 1 Jy, 
, and |b|>10 
. This Southern Hemisphere investigation allows, for the first time, observations of a ``Whole-Sky'' sample of the nearest bright and compact radio sources to be assembled. The ``Whole-Sky'' sample defined here consists of 12 sources with z<0.06, 
Jy, and 
. Six of these sources lie in the Southern Hemisphere and are investigated in detail for the first time here.
In contributing 6/12 sources to a ``Whole-Sky'' sample of nearby, bright, and compact radio sources the two major aims of this thesis have been fulfilled:
1] To use VLBI observations to determine the parsec and sub-parsec-scale structure of these radio sources and to search for evolution at high spatial resolution.
2] To investigate the relationships between the structure/evolution of the compact radio sources and emission at other wavelengths.
Each of the six sources are discussed in detail, according to the two aims given above on a chapter-per-source basis, revealing a rich diversity in their VLBI properties and also in the properties of the host galaxies. In conclusion, the ``Whole-Sky'' sample is assembled and its VLBI characteristics are discussed.
Also included in this thesis is an extensive comparison between the VLBI properties of radio sources identified by the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) as sources of greater than 100 MeV gamma-ray emission and the VLBI properties of similar radio sources which have not been identified by EGRET. This investigation was motivated by the EGRET identification of PKS 0521-365 (one of the low red shift sources) and recent theoretical and observational efforts to understand the gamma-ray emission from AGN.
Finally, this thesis contains the detailed description of a VLBI imaging study of GRO J1655-40, the Galactic X-ray nova discovered in 1994 July.