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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 57| June 2002


Australian Book Review cover

New Partnership between the National Library and the Australian Book Review

The National Library recently entered into a new one-year partnership with Australian Book Review, a prestigious and widely distributed national magazine of comment and review, edited by Peter Rose. This partnership sees the Library become Australian Book Review’s national sponsor.

Images from the Library’s extensive Pictorial Collection will be featured on Australian Book Review’s front covers for a 12-month period, and in each issue the Library will supply a column describing the particular collection from which the cover image is drawn.

To inaugurate this arrangement the May 2002 issue of Australian Book Review featured an early photograph of Parliament House and the West Block administrative building in Canberra in the 1920s, taken by Jack Mildenhall. The image was from the Library’s Mildenhall Collection, which consists of more than 600 lantern slides and which originally constituted Mildenhall’s private collection (Mildenhall also took approximately 7700 official photographs, now held in the National Archives of Australia).

Every second issue of Australian Book Review will also feature a full-page column on Library issues of special interest, including research undertakings, major projects, key publications and exhibitions. The first of these columns appeared in the May issue and focused on the Library’s major project to publish—under the auspices of the Library’s Morris West Trust Fund—an edited transcript of the 44 Donald Friend diaries held in the Library’s Manuscript Collection. These extraordinary, richly-illustrated diaries are a major literary work and span nearly 60 years of Friend’s life.

From time-to-time Australian Book Review will also carry photographic essays drawn from the Library’s collections. Discussions have already taken place about the possibility of showcasing in such essays some of the marvellous performing arts material held in the Library.

The Library’s Director-General, Jan Fullerton, embraced the new arrangement between the Library and Australian Book Review when she wrote: ‘I welcome this opportunity for the Library to support the activities of a magazine that has contributed over many years to Australia’s cultural life, and which has promoted an awareness of our documentary heritage through reviews, essays and the discussion of ideas.’

As part of the new partnership arrangement Dr Paul Hetherington, Director of the Library’s Publications and Events Branch, has become a member of Australian Book Review’s editorial advisory board. Discussions are already underway about possible events in Canberra, to be held jointly by the Library and Australian Book Review.

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au

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