Recent Acquisition Highlights

June 2003

Background

This report offers a review of recent major acquisitions of significance and trends in collection development activity in the National Library.  It does not describe the large volume of acquisitions of both Australian and overseas materials that are routinely acquired through deposit, purchase or donation to build the collections.  During the financial year 2002-2003 it is estimated that the Library will acquire over 300,000 collection items in a large range of formats.

Australian Printed Materials

The National Library continues to acquire many printed works associated with the European discovery and exploration of Australia. 

A number of books related to Australia and not previously held in the Library’s collections have been received.  These include nineteenth and twentieth century imprints.

The Library is constantly seeking Australian periodicals not represented in the national collection, or individual issues missing from its sets.  Among the most recent acquisitions are:

Australian documentary heritage is also represented by more ephemeral or insubstantial material, and the National Library collects a varied selection documenting aspects of Australian life.

The Library collects a representative sample of calendars each year.  Through selective acquisition a small number of examples from previous years are added to the collection.

A number of posters from World War II relating to the civilian and domestic effort in Australia were acquired.  Topics featured include the Australian Comforts Fund; civilian help for the war effort, loans, bonds and certificates and stamps to aid the war effort; recruitment of women into the services; and recruitment of men into the services.  Artists included Walter Jardine and the cartoonist Les Such.

Australian Electronic Publications

The Library’s Electronic Unit seeks out and archives significant Australian websites and other electronic documents as a way of preserving this aspect of Australia’s published heritage material.  The following examples of items recently archived show the diversity of the material being collected and preserved.

Asian Collections

Law is an important area of collecting for the National Library and legal materials relating to Asia are in high demand.  Although there is a good printed collection of legal texts built up over the years, readers are finding that electronic resources offer better search functions and ease of use.  Two CD-ROMs containing Indonesian and Japanese legal texts respectively were recently purchased.  Together with the Chinese law database on CD-ROM, they form a good foundation for building up an electronic collection in this important area.

With funding contribution from the Japan Foundation in Sydney, a 23 volume set of work titled  Nihonjin no kaigai katsudo ni kansuru rekishi-teki chosa was recently acquired. Originating as an internal government study completed shortly after the Second World War on Japanese immigrants and Japanese industries overseas during 1868-1945, this first time published work  provides valuable historical information into Japanese activities in occupied areas including Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria and later China and Southeast Asia

The latest census on the Chinese population, the largest in the world, carried out in 2000, is now gradually being published for all 31 provinces.  Compared to the last census in 1990, the publications this time are more readily available to overseas collecting institutions and so far the volumes for two provinces, together with that for the whole nation, have arrived in the Library.

The National Library has arrangements with Australian embassies in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to acquire publications from the region for the Library.  The Library has acquired Ancient inscriptions of Cambodia, a beautifully illustrated four-volume set published by UNESCO in Phnom Penh, on the ancient history of Cambodia through a study of Khmer inscriptions.  From Laos Phon khong kansamluat sathiti kasikam, 1998/1999, a 19-volume set of agricultural statistics of the country by province was acquired.  In comparison to Cambodia and Laos, there is much more electronic publishing in Thailand.  A recent addition to the Thai CD-ROM collection is Khomun Watthanatham 76 Changwat, four CD-ROMs containing detailed information on the social customs and cultures of 76 provinces in Thailand.

Overseas Materials

The Library purchased a substantial run of The Guardian newspaper on microfilm.  This title, published by the Church of England, provides social, intellectual, political and theological commentary and is an important historical source particularly for the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The latest unit of Goldsmith-Kress Library of Economic Literature comprising 582 titles on 46 reels of microfilm was received.  This supplement reflects the range of the literature of economics in Europe in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

Providing access to electronic resources is a priority for the Library.  During the period under review, the following important resources have been made available to readers.

Manuscripts

The Library regularly acquires diaries of nineteenth century seamen, travellers and emigrants who visited or settled in Australia.  Two recent examples are the diaries of William Balham, who arrived in Sydney in 1879, and Thomas East, who arrived four years later and spent his first weeks languishing at the North Head quarantine station.  Of particular interest is the journal of Lieutenant James Hay, who served on the Australian Naval Station in 1880-83.  Containing many delightful drawings, it records in detail the tours made by British warships in the Western Pacific and describes a punitive expedition following the murder of an officer in the Solomon Islands.  It should be a useful source on cross-cultural relations in the Pacific.

The surveyor R H Mathews and the zoologist Sir Baldwin Spencer were two of the major figures documenting Aboriginal society, beliefs and customs at the turn of the twentieth century.  Some interesting letters and manuscripts have been added to the Mathews Papers, one of the most heavily used manuscript collections.  The Library has also acquired annotated copies of two of Spencer’s books.  The extensive annotations of The Aboriginal tribes of central Australia (1899) date from the 1920s and show his response to the writings of Carl Strehlow and others in the years since his book was published.

Acquisitions of modern collections of personal papers are quite diverse.  They include the papers of Archbishop Hugh Gough and Canon William Edwards (the first headmaster of Canberra Grammar School), the politician Sir Fred Chaney, the sports writers John Worrall (formerly a Test cricketer) and Harry Gordon, the feminist and public servant Elizabeth Reid, the musicians Andrew Ford, Margaret Kartomi and Patrick Thomas, the theatre producer Robin Lovejoy, the writers Rosemary Dobson, Jack Hibberd, Mark O’Connor and Judith Wright, the historian Ann Moyal and the doctor and leader of the Greek community Spiro Moraitis.  The last instalment of papers of Judith Wright was received; over a period of 30 years there has been 28 instalments.  All but two of these collections were donated, in some cases under the Cultural Gifts Program, which provides a taxation incentive for donors.

The Australian National University Library is divesting itself of manuscript holdings and several collections were offered to the National Library.  Among the more substantial collections are papers of the poets Flexmore Hudson and A.D. Hope, the lawyer J G Starke and several collections relating to immigrant communities.  The largest is the Russian Émigré Collection, containing papers and publications of families and individuals who left Russia after the 1917 Revolution and who eventually found their way to Australia.

Maps

The Library has acquired a rare pair of collapsible terrestrial globes, one in French and the other in German, produced by Carl Bauer in Nuremberg in about 1825.  They were designed as an educational tool for young geographers and show William Parry’s discoveries near the North Pole.  They are accompanied by a set of notes and miniature sheet maps of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and various European countries.  Other early items are a map by Nicolas Sanson of the imagined Arctic and Antarctic regions, printed in Amsterdam in about 1690, and eleven globe gores for the southern hemisphere of a territorial globe, compiled by the French cartographer Nicolas Bion in about 1700.  The gores depict the eastern coast of Australia in a vaguely accurate way (although linking New Holland to the New Hebrides) and may be based on the world map of Jean Baptiste Nolin.  One of three known copies of the Nolin map was purchased by the Library in 2002.

Turning from the eighteenth century to the last six months, the Library has acquired on CD-ROM digital remote satellite imagery showing the ACT and surrounding region before and after the January bushfires.

Music

The euphoria surrounding the presentation of the Sculthorpe collection in December 2002 has generated considerable interest in music donations.  Richard Divall donated his collection of music scores and orchestral arrangements representing his 35-year career as an operatic conductor in Australia. Materials relating to early rock musicals were presented by Michael Wade, a musical director and later publisher. In addition to sheet music, manuscripts, programs and ephemera the collection also includes an early musical typewriter.  The last instalment of the Don Banks collection was also received, comprising sound recordings, videos and photographs.  Alan Stiles presented his newly published editions of works of the New Zealand–Australian composer Alfred Hill.  Early items received have included a valuable piece of 19th century sheet music entitled In the Diggings and the program of Nellie Melba’s concert tour in 1902. 

Oral History

Interviewing for the Library’s oral history collection has concentrated on eminent Australians in numerous fields, ranging from law to obstetrics.  They include Sir James Gobbo; the political scientist and former editor of Quadrant Robert Manne, economist Don Lamberton, historians Ann Curthoys, Bill Gammage and Susan Marsden; marine biologist David Pollard, medical researcher Alan Trounson, newspaper executive Andrew Clark, retired public servant Sir Richard Kingsland and the politician Senator Aden Ridgeway, in this case reinterviewed by Jackie Huggins and Peter Read as part of the Seven Years On project which is interviewing young Indigenous leaders. At the time of the earlier interview, recorded in 1995, Senator Ridgeway was Director of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council.

Literature and the arts are well represented among recent interviewees.  Recordings were made with the playwrights Alan Seymour and Nick Enright (who has since died) and the poet Michael Thwaites (who at different times was an ASIO officer and a librarian).  The Library’s Curator of Dance, Dr Michelle Potter, has interviewed the dancers and ballet directors Eileen Kramer, Ray Crook, Ross Stretton, Marilyn Rowe and Ian McRae.  Among other interviewees have been composer Roger Smalley, folklorist Bill Scott, folksinger and historian Danny Spooner, singer and songwriter Ted Egan and conservator Professor Colin Pearson.

Pictures

The Library’s record of Tasmania’s wilderness areas was enhanced by the acquisition of 20 colour exhibition prints by eminent photographer and conservationist, Peter Dombrovskis.  Dombrovskis was born in Europe in 1945 and emigrated to Australia with his mother in 1950.  He was strongly influenced by Lithuanian-Australian pioneer conservationist and photographer Olegas Truchanas, and by landscape photographers of mid-century America such as Ansel Adams.  Dombrovskis’ exquisitely beautiful landscapes have a strong political element and he made them freely available for use by conservation organisations.  Through publication in the Wilderness Calendar series, calendars and books, or use in illustrated lectures, his photographs influenced many Australians.  One of the photographs acquired by the Library, Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania, 1979, played an important role in the successful campaign to prevent the construction of the dam on the lower Franklin River, Tasmania.

In January, the Library arranged for staff photographer Damian McDonald to join a small group of media to photograph damaged buildings at the Woomera Detention Centre following a protest by detainees.  The damage to the Centre was extensive and was widely reported in the press both in Australia and overseas.  McDonald’s photographs complement photographs of the Baxter Detention Centre just before it was opened, and photographs of a range of protests on the refugee issue in various capital cities.  The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs does not permit photography inside detention centres while detainees are in residence.

A comprehensive collection of over 1,650 original cartoons by George Molnar was acquired by donation through the Cultural Gifts Program.  The cartoons are a significant addition to the Library’s pictorial record of public opinion of architecture and town planning issues; the relationship of people to the built environment; the ethics of public space; popular opinion on politics and politicians at the international, national and local levels; and Australian social history.

A collection of photographs of the Tasmanian 19th century photographer George Cherry and his family were acquired by donation from Mrs Jennifer Baume to complement Cherry’s papers.  The collection includes fine examples of ambrotypes and other early photographic techniques.

The Robin Lovejoy Archive was acquired by purchase from Mrs Patricia Lovejoy. The pictorial component of the collection contains 51 costume designs in watercolour, gouache and ink, 55 set designs in watercolour, ink and oil paint, 353 photographs of theatre and opera performances dating from 1948 to the early 1980s and a number of drawings and sketches, a poster and a hand-drawn card.  The photographs in particular are a significant addition to the Library’s pictorial record of Australian theatre performances in the decades following World War II.  The costume designs for Corroboree will complement the Library’s holdings relating to John Antill’s score.

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