Over the coming months we’re making some changes at the Library to better care for your national collection. We’re upgrading our oldest compactus, completing some building work and transitioning to new collection delivery times.

Delivery times are changing

From 23 March 2020 some of our collection delivery times will change.

To make it easier for you, we’ve broken it into two types of requests:

  1. Deliveries from onsite storage
  2. Deliveries from offsite storage

If in doubt, order your requests the day before your visit for delivery the next weekday. You should also log into the catalogue and check the progress of your requests.

For a full breakdown, see our collection delivery times.

We collect today what will be important tomorrow

We’re dealing with almost 300km of shelf storage and our collection continues to grow by 2.5km every year.

In order to make room for new Australian collections onsite, from March 2020 we’re moving some books offsite. During this collection move, some books will be temporarily unavailable. Speak with Library staff for further information or Ask a Librarian.

Before we move new collections in, we’re also taking this opportunity to upgrade our oldest compactus which is located in our underground stacks.

We’re building a better Library

From February to May 2020, we’re doing some building work at the Library. During March and April 2020 we are replacing some of our roof insulation. For a short period of time, we will have limited or no access to some manuscript collections.

From late March to early May some manuscript collections will not be available unless prior notice is given. To use manuscripts during this time, submit your requests by 20 March and include a note to say when you intend to visit the Library.

Due to the building works these dates and delivery times may vary without notice.

See staff in the Special Collections Reading Room or Ask a Librarian for more information on the availability of the particular manuscript collections you wish to use.