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April 1996
In the period since the last Acquisitions report there has been
sustained activity in a number of collecting areas and a significant enrichment
of the collections in areas of high priority as determined under the current
Collection Development Policy. The most interesting and noteworthy acquisitions
have been made in the Australian field, where a solid effort has been made to
consolidate existing areas of strength as well as to extend the range of the
Library's holdings in areas which have not always been as effectively covered
as they might be. This reflects the attention being given by the Library to the
fine tuning and enhancement of its program to collect the Australian imprint.
Australian Printed Materials
- In the area of printed Australiana, a number of notable initiatives
have been pursued, perhaps the most significant being in the field of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander materials and indigenous publishing. The
Australian Collection Development Unit has commenced implementation of an
active program to enhance the Library's holdings of a range of materials
relating to Australia's indigenous peoples.
- In September 1995, Mr Michael Proud, an officer of the Library,
attended the annual meeting of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and
Library Information Network (ASTILIRN) held in Batchelor in the Northern
Territory. Representatives from most State libraries, a number of key public
libraries and aboriginal bodies including Land Councils attended the meeting.
Matters covered in discussion included consideration of the draft protocols
relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander materials, enhancement of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Thesaurus, the ALIA policy statement on
library and information policies relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and steps towards the facilitation of access to indigenous
materials in a range of Australian libraries. The establishment of ASTILIRN and
the success of its recent conference (only the second in a proposed program of
annual conferences), represents an important development in communication and
contact between various sectors concerned with the provision of information
services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The National Library
has become a formal member of ASTILIRN and proposes to attend future
meetings.
Following the ASTILIRN Conference, Mr Proud undertook an
extensive program of visits to publishers of indigenous materials in the
Northern Territory to ascertain levels of output and arrangements for
distribution.. Seventeen organisations in Alice Springs and Darwin were visited
including Land Councils, Literature Production Centres, health authorities,
cultural groups, government departments, research bodies and independent
aboriginal organisations.
An overall increase in publishing activity
in recent years was found to be common, with a clear trend towards publication
in community languages and in the use of illustrative materials for a low
literacy clientele. Distribution patterns for this material appear to be poorly
developed and the awareness of legal deposit requirements is low. The National
Library of Australia is a remote institution in many senses. Mr Proud's visit
offered a valuable opportunity to explain the nature and purpose of the
Library's collecting program and the advantages in securing long-term
presevation of material which cumulatively serves to provide a valuable
documentary record. This program generated considerable goodwill towards the
National Library and resulted in offers of cooperation and a willingness by
various publishers to place material into the Library's collection. It is clear
however that these arrangements will need to monitored on a regular basis over
time to ensure the maintenance and continuity of supply. The Australian
Collection Development Unit has now developed an action plan for the enhanced
acquisition of indigenous materials and will undertake a regular program of
follow-up visits.
- During the recent Federal election, the National Library made a
special effort, as it has done in previous election campaigns, to collect
campaign literature and ephemera. Letters were written to all 1200 candidates
and to the 70 registered parties and yielded policy statements and platforms as
well as local literature from many candidates. For the first time, in this
campaign, the Library made a special effort to target lobby groups. Based on
press reports of reactions to launches and promises by the parties, the Library
initiated a telephone campaign requesting any published material such as media
statements, policies, press kits and so on. This proved to be a highly
successful exercise and brought in a range of material from, amongst others,
industry, unions, business, the arts and the environment.
During the
1996 campaign, the Internet emerged as an important source of information on a
range of election issues with numerous parties and interest groups such as
lobby groups, pollsters, commentators and media outlets establishing election
Websites. By the time of election day, over 30 sites were being monitored daily
for new information and material not likely to be available in print form was
being printed or down loaded in order to secure its representation in the
Library's collection, an important initiative to document Australia's first
'cyberpoll'.
Following the Library's distribution of a media release,
considerable publicity was given to the efforts to document the election. Mr
Richard Stone, as Manager of the Australian Collection Development Unit,
conducted 11 live-to-air radio interviews with ABC Regional Radio in locations
as far afield as Darwin, Alice Springs, Longreach, Lismore and Albury. Prime
time interviews were done on ABC Radio in Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra.
Details of the collecting campaign were also published in the Canberra
Times and the Age newspaper in Melbourne.
- The Library recently negotiated the acquisition of the extensive
collection of Gordon Clive Bleeck, an Australian author over many years of what
is often described as 'pulp fiction'- westerns, crime, romance and science
fiction, a publishing genre often poorly represented in libraries of record,
partly because of the ephemeral nature of such publishing and sometimes because
of prejudice against it. Publishers of such material either overlooked or
ignored their legal deposit obligations and libraries generally failed to
monitor compliance with these obligations. The sheer volume of material and its
fragile and fugitive nature makes retrospective acquisition difficult for
libraries.
Gordon Bleeck worked for many years with the New South
Wales railways and wrote pulp fiction in his leisure time. His first story was
published in England in 1932 but subsequently all his stories and novels were
published in Australia by Horwitz, Cleveland and other mass publishing houses.
The National Library has now acquired a collection of 350 novels and stories
written by Bleeck. An important feature of the collection is the meticulous
documentation kept by Bleeck which records every details of every story he
wrote, where it was published, details of pseudonyms and of payments made for
his work.
- As part of the development of its collections relating to the performing arts in
Australia, the Library gives emphasis to materials which document the work
of Australian performers abroad. It is thought that no other collecting
organisation in Australia attempts the same systematic coverage of this aspect
of Australia's cultural and artistic history. In recent months, the Library has
acquired some valuable materials which document the success of Australian
singers at a number of important opera houses in Italy, the United States and
Britain. These include programs from La Scala in Milan for performances at that
house by Joan Sutherland in the 1960's; a collection of programs for Australian
singers such as Florence Austral, John Brownlee, Dame Joan Hammond and others
appearing at American and English opera houses from the early 1930's to the
present; and a collection of material relating to performances by Australians
at Sadlers Wells (later the English National Opera).

Australian Manuscript Materials
- Manuscript acquisitions have been quite diverse, with collections
documenting Australian art, literature, dance, theatre, journalism, politics,
environmentalism, the peace movement, the gay movement and Japanese Buddhism.
Individuals represented range from Charles Dickens, Norman Lindsay and Dame
Pattie Menzies to Malcolm Williamson, Reg Withers and Clifton Pugh.
- The Library holds a few Dickens letters, including one that he
wrote as a young man referring to convict transportation to Australia. It has
now purchased the last letter that he ever wrote to one of his sons in
Australia. In 1870, Alfred Dickens was living in Hamilton in Victoria, while
his brother had recently emigrated to New South Wales. In his affectionate
letter, written less than four weeks before his death, Charles Dickens referred
to both brothers and their aspirations to be leaders of colonial society. In
fact neither son achieved great success, although Edward did briefly represent
Wilcannia in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.
- In the early 1900's, the young Norman Lindsay was beginning to
acquire a national reputation as a black and white artist for the
Bulletin. The Library has acquired a manuscript written and illustrated
by Lindsay in about 1900 and entitled 'The Amorate, or Dwellers in Utopia'. It
is a bawdy, rollicking work, featuring such characters as Falstaff, Ovid,
Horace and Villon. It was dedicated to his brother Lionel Lindsay.
- Another outstanding acquisition is the diary, in two volumes, kept
in 1938-1939 by John Black when he explored the western highlands of Papua New
Guinea. The Hagen-Sepik journey, which Black carried out with Jim Taylor, was
the longest patrol ever carried out in the territory and is regarded as one of
the great exploring journeys of the twentieth century. The two large volumes
are packed with notes, photographs and maps, as well as later annotations, and
are a fascinating record of a journey through largely unknown and harsh
country. The Library holds many collections of papers of Australians who worked
in Papua New Guinea between 1885 and 1975, ranging from the papers of Sir
Hubert Murray to diaries of young patrol officers. As a document and an
artefact, Black's diary probably surpasses them all in both research and
popular interest.
- The theatre director John Sumner has presented two of the original
scripts of ray Lawler's play 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll' This play was
first performed in Melbourne by the Union Theatre Repertory Company in November
1954, with Sumner as the producer. It was immediately acclaimed as 'an
Australian play by an Australian author, with an all-Australian cast' and as '
a new page in Australian theatrical history.'
- Turning from single manuscripts to collections of papers, there
have been some important additions to the holdings of painters and other
artists. Traditionally, the Library was not especially strong in this area,
apart from a few figures such as Sir Hans Heysen, James Gleeson and Donald
Friend but gradually the situation is changing. Recent acquisitions have
included the papers of Noel Counihan and Clifton Pugh, a volume of letters and
other papers relating to the landscape painter Elioth Gruner, and the first
instalment of the art historian and critic Sasha Grishin. The Counihan and Pugh
papers are both fine personal archives, containing many letters, manuscripts,
exhibition catalogues, reviews and cuttings, and photographs. In addition,
there are a number of sketchbooks and loose sketches of Pugh, including a few
studies for portraits.
- In the performing arts, the Library has received a collection of
papers of Dame Peggy Van Praagh the first Artistic Director of the Australian
Ballet. The letters, programs, photographs and reminiscences complement another
collection which Dame Peggy presented some years ago.. The expatriate actor
Lloyd Lamble has donated a copy of his unpublished and highly entertaining
memoirs. They cover his childhood in Melbourne and his work in the 1900s and
1940s as a leading radio and stage actor.
- Another expatriate, the poet Harold Stewart' has bequeathed to the
Library his manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence. Stewart, who was one of
the perpetrators of the Ern Malley hoax, lived in Japan from 1966 until his
death in 1995. The papers include only a small quantity of material relating to
his early years but offer a rich documentation of his period in Japan,
including his spiritual autobiography By the Old Walls of Kyoto. There
is an extensive incoming correspondence and it has been partly balanced by
donations from a number of friends of letters they had received from Stewart.
- There have been several important additions to literary
collections. Geoffrey Dutton has transferred further papers to the huge archive
already held in the Library. They mainly relate to his writings over the last
six or seven years, including his biography of Kenneth Slessor, his collected
poems and his controversial autobiography Out in the Open. In addition,
there are photographs, letters and diaries of his parents and other members of
his family, extending back to the nineteenth century and documenting their life
as colonial gentry. The playwright David Williamson has donated papers which
also cover his literary activities over recent years including his plays 'Money
and Friends', 'Brilliant Lies' and 'Sanctuary'. In addition, the letters and
speeches record many of his public activities in this period. A writer with a
completely different background, Ralph de Boissiere, has added letters and his
unpublished memoirs to the papers he placed in the Library some years ago. The
memoirs record his early years in Trinidad, the development of his socialist
beliefs, the difficulties of emigrating to Australia with a young family, and
his association with the realist Writers Group. Another radical writer, the
historian Russel Ward, placed his papers in the Library some years ago.
Following his death in 1995, the Ward family have transferred the remaining
papers, including material relating to Russel Ward's autobiography.
- A useful source for political historians is a manuscript written
c.1935 by the newspaper editor Herbert Campbell-Jones. In the early 1930s, he
had been the parliamentary reporter for the Argus. His manuscript
comprises a series of vignettes of Barton, Deakin, Forrest, Kingston, Isaacs,
Hughes and many other members of the first Federal Parliament. The papers have
also been acquired of two of the more colourful Federal parliamentarians of
modern times. Fred Daly, who died last year, left an extensive series of files,
extending back to the 1940s and covering not only many of the principal
political issues but also notable personalities associated with his period in
federal politics. There are also some papers and photographs of J.B. Chifley.
On the conservative side of Australian politics, Reg Withers has presented an
interesting collection of speeches. letters, cutting books and photographs.
Another former parliamentarian, Bill Hayden, has added papers to the large
collection already held in the Library. They cover his period as
Governor-General and are an important addition to the vice-regal holdings which
include the papers of Tennyson, Novar, Stonehaven, Gowrie, Casey, Hasluck and
Cowen.
- The Library has a few collections that touch on one of the great
political issues of the early 1980s, the Franklin Dam controversy. The
journalist Simon Balderstone was actively involved in the controversy and he
has donated a useful collection of cuttings, newsletters, transcripts,
correspondence and other materials. The Library has also acquired the papers of
an outstanding figure in the conservation movement, John Sinclair, who first
achieved fame by leading the attack on mining on Fraser Island. His papers
cover thirty years and record not only the work of the Fraser Island Defenders
Organisation but Sinclair's uneasy association with the Australian Conservation
Foundation, the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and other bodies.
- A number of other acquisitions deserve brief mention. Heather
Henderson has donated letters, memorabilia, photographs and other papers of her
mother, Dame Pattie Menzies, which will complement the Library's large holding
of the Papers of Sir Robert Menzies. A collection has been received of the
papers of John Howard Litten, a Methodist minister who had a long involvement
in child emigration from Britain and children's homes in Australia. The Sydney
lawyer Vivienne Abraham has presented her papers covering her work in the
Australian peace movement, especially the Federal Pacifist Council of Australia
and the Fellowship of reconciliation. Greg Weir of Brisbane has donated a
meticulously organised and indexed collection of parliamentary papers,
submissions, printed ephemera, transcripts of news programs, letters and other
papers relating to gay and lesbian issues. Some items date from the nineteenth
century, but the bulk of papers are from the 1960s onwards and include a large
body of material on the AIDS crisis. Professor Catherine Ellis, formerly of the
University of New England, has passed over material relating to her research on
Aboriginal music. Finally, the journalist Norman Abjorensen has placed in the
Library research material, transcripts of interviews and drafts of his
biography of John Hewson.

Pictorial Acquisitions
- Portrait acquisitions have again been important during the period
under review. This reflects in part the Library's responsibility for management
of the National Portrait Gallery but is also a reflection of the on-going
commitment to build a pictorial documentary record which reflects national
achievement and endeavour in Australia.
- The Library received as a gift from the artist Lina Bryans of
Melbourne a portrait (oil on canvas 51 x 44.1 cm.) of the late Professor Jock
Marshall, the distinguished Australian botanist, who became well-known as an
advocate for environmental and conservation issues during the 1960s. From the
artist Margaret Ackland, the Library acquired a portrait of theatre director
Richard Wherrett (acrylic on canvas 182 x 165 cm.) set against a backdrop of
the theatre complex on The Wharf adjacent to Sydney Harbour.
- From members of the Vidal family in England, the Library has
acquired a pair of portraits of the nineteenth century writer Mary Vidal and
her husband the Rev. Francis Vidal, together with a portrait study of Mary as a
child. Mary Vidal is best-known for her short stories of life in Australia. In
1840, she and her husband emigrated to Australia where they lived for five
years before returning to England. She is credited with being the first woman
writer of short stories in Australia. After returning to England, she wrote two
more books with Australian themes.
- Building on the large collection of portrait photographs of artists
by the Sydney photographer Greg Weight, the Library has purchased prints of
portrait studies of the painters Gary Shead, Nora Heysen, Jenny Sages, Joshua
Smith and James Gleeson Eight photographs were purchased from Rex Dupain, son
of the photographer Max Dupain. They are portraits by Max Dupain of the war
photographer Damien Parer, the photographer Olive Cotton, the architects Harry
Seidler and Walter Gropius, the musician Sir Eugene Goossens and the painters
Sir Russell Drysdale, Sid Ball and Tim Storrier. Twenty-four photographs were
donated by the Sydney Dance Company, documenting aspects of the life and work
of this company. The collection includes studies of Graeme Murphy and Janet
Vernon, together with photographs of various productions featuring dancers such
as Paul Mercurio, Garth Welch, Stephen Page and Lea Francis.
- Continuing the work of the Regional Cities and Major Towns Project
in which the Library has embarked on a systematic program of the photographic
documentation of notable Australian towns and cities, the Library has
commissioned from a panel of photographers, studies of Bundaberg, Toowoomba,
Warwick, Gympie, Lismore, Gawler, Murray Bridge, Mount Gambier and several
others. Work is continuing on this project.

Oral History
- The Oral History Section has continued its program to develop a
collection of major biographical interviews with eminent Australians. During
the period under review, interviews were completed with dancers Stephen Page,
Paul Mercurio and Gideon Obarzanek, the artist and illustrator Eric Jolliffe,
Ray Whitrod, the former Queensland Police Commissioner and John B Fairfax, a
member of the Fairfax family of newspaper proprietors.
- Work is continuing on a number of special projects to interview
notable persons working in a defined field. As part of the Law in Australian
Society project, interviews were completed with Judge F.X.Connor, Judge Judith
Cohen, and Judge Sally Brown. An interview has been commenced with the painter
Arthur Boyd as part of the Australians of the Year project and interviews have
been completed with a number of Aboriginal leaders, Adam Ridgeway, Roderick
Mullet, Dr Ian Anderson and Larissa Behrendt as part of the project Seven years
On: Emerged/Emerging Aboriginal Leaders.
Last updated 10 April 1996, Links updated 18 December 1998
