Recent Acquisition Highlights
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.
