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Viewing of the Magna Carta with the British High Commissioner 1952

enlarge imageViewing of the Magna Carta with the British High Commissioner 1952
photograph
Pictorial Collection
(Harold White second from right)
The Library  acquired a 1297 Inspeximus issue of the Magna Carta in 1952.

In the 1950s the Library began the systematic acquisition of publications from Asia. It has since built up the largest research collection on Asia in Australia, with over half a million volumes. In April 1962 a separate Asian section was established to oversee the growing Chinese, Japanese, and later Korean, Thai and Indonesian materials.

Since the 1950s a number of major formed collections in Asian and Western languages have been acquired from scholars and bibliophiles. They include the London Missionary Society Collection on China (1961), the Braga Collection on the Portuguese in Asia (1966), the Coedes Collection of Southeast Asia (1970) and the Luce Collection on Burma (1980).

enlarge imageImage reproduced from M. Paske-Smith, Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days, 16031868, (Kobe, Japan: J.L. Thompson and Co. Ltd, [1930])
Harold S. Williams Collection; from the Asian Collections
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