Future Memory

National Library Recent Acquisitions

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National Library Recent Acquisitions

Thursday, May 27, 2004 - Sunday, August 1, 2004 Exhibition Gallery

Courtship and Marriage,

Courtship and Marriage,
a Fascinating Game for 2, 3, or 4 Players

[Melbourne: National Game Co., c.1905]
National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia’s prime collecting responsibility is to document Australia’s heritage. However, its overseas historical collections are also strong, and today the Library buys a significant number of books and serials from abroad that give Australians the opportunity to gain an understanding of their country’s place in the region and the world.

Material in the collection includes books, journals, newspapers, printed music, manuscripts, maps, oral history interviews, realia, and oil paintings, watercolours, prints and photographs. It is selected according to the Library’s Collection Development Policy, and may come through purchase, gift, bequest or legal deposit.

Future Memory presents a fascinating insight into what has come into the Library’s collection during the past four years. The exhibition, which contains over 200 items, begins with a book on the law of the English church dated 1505 and concludes with a satellite image of the bushfires which devastated Canberra in January 2003. In between there is an 18th century book on the popular use of the microscope; an 1802 map of the Derwent River and paintings of Australian birds from the early 1800s; a Victorian board game called Courtship and Marriage: A Game for 2,3 or 4 players; a 1944 "Weetbix" jingle by entertainer and songwriter Jack Lumsdaine; exquisite images of Tasmania by Peter Dombrovskis and photographs of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

There is a related display in the Visitor Centre of Australian items received by legal deposit and publications deposited by international organisations such as the United Nations.

Amusing Alphabet

Amusing Alphabet. Le Jardin d’acclimatation
(The Zoological Garden)
London: Darton & Hodge, [1863–1865]
National Library of Australia

White-backed Magpie

Antoine-Germain Bevalet (1779–1850)
Voyage de l’Uranie, Oiseaux: Cassican fluteur
(White-backed Magpie) [c.1820s]
National Library of Australia

Bird’s Eye Map of the British

The Daily Mail Bird’s Eye Map of the British
Front , Section 1
London: Daily Mail,
[between 1916 and 1918]
National Library of Australia

Chinese Market Gardener

Jeff Carter (b.1928)
Chinese Market Gardener at the
Queen Victoria Markets, Melbourne
1956
National Library of Australia
Susanne Olsen
Men’s Relay 4 x 100 m. Semi-Final Heat, Olympic Games, Olympic Stadium, Homebush Bay, Friday 29th Sept. 2000
National Library of Australia
Peter Dombrovskis (1945–1996)
Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, Southwest Tasmania 1988
National Library of Australia
John Coburn (b.1925)
Sun Music 1989
National Library of Australia