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Birth of a Library
Birth of a Library
Bush Capital Pioneers
A Great Public Library
Our Heritage Revealed
From the Bush to Beyond
Housing the Collection


With the Petherick Collection now forming the nucleus of its Australian Collections, the Library began collecting other material relating to Australia. In 1920, an issue of the Melbourne Advertiser, published on 1 January 1838, was purchased. This issue was believed to be the last survivor of a print run of 30. Acquired in the same year was the 27 October 1838 edition of the Port Phillip Gazette. In that year, the Library also purchased 25 Norman Lindsay drawings for £800.

Although the scope of the Library’s collections was rapidly moving beyond parliamentary material and beginning to strongly reflect the Library’s aspirations to be a ‘national library’, its situation within Parliament House made it vulnerable to political tensions. In 1920 Andrew Osborn began his career at the Library well aware of parliamentary influence:

play audioAt that time the National Library decided that it wanted to have what it called a cadet. Its method of recruiting the young person was to go to the headmasters of the six public schools in Victoria and invite each headmaster to nominate a boy. The boy who was nominated from Scotch College had the strong support of the Speaker of the House; the boy who was nominated from Melbourne Grammar had the strong support of the President of the Senate. Neither the Speaker nor the President would give into the other, and so in the long run the selection went to the boy who had no political backing; and so that was the way I started in the National Library.

Andrew Osborn Oral History, 1962

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