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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:
At
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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