Popular culture
Scope of collection
Popular Culture covers the range of pursuits that were or are widely practised, watched or listened to by mainstream Australian society. It documents the development of activities, pastimes and forms of entertainment enjoyed by the majority of people in NSW and includes the impact of mass media on participation trends.
Collecting aims and intentions
The State Library aims to collect historic and current material on the many varied aspects of popular culture within an Australian and particularly a New South Wales context, including material relating to alternative lifestyles.
The concept of popular culture includes important social features such as how we spend our leisure time, what we eat and drink, what clothes we choose to wear, where and how we choose to live. It ranges over subjects such as the history of our childhoods, the forever-changing diversity of youth subcultures, the phenomenon of home ownership and the rise of the suburb, the celebration of Anzac Day, the popularity of shopping malls and the influence of other cultures and advertising on our lives.
Many materials depicting popular culture are ephemeral in nature and rely strongly on Legal Deposit provisions and on knowledge in the broader community that the State Library has a commitment to collecting non-standard formats. Some examples are menus, invitations, programs, comics and handbills.
Images focussing on revealing today's changing, urban society and reflecting issues such as urban lifestyle, the workplace, the built environment, fads and fashions, amusements and the use of leisure are collected. The preferred medium of collecting is photographs and negatives, with some video and film material chiefly where related to manuscript collections.
Acquisitions are considered on their value for future research or for contemporary interest.
Existing collection
- Published information relating to popular culture produced in New South Wales. Printed materials produced outside New South Wales relating to the popular culture of New South Wales or of Australia in general
- Personal papers of popular Australian writers, performers and other personalities
- Business and organisational records including those of publishers and community groups, radio and television scripts
- Important representation of popular culture is in magazine publishing. The State Library holds long and extensive runs of many popular and mainstream titles such as Australian Women's Weekly, New Idea, Cleo, HQ Magazine, Cinema Papers, Go Set, Wheels, Australian Gourmet Traveller, The Open Road, Smith's Weekly and TV Week
- Extensive retrospective holdings of many locally-published popular magazines, especially national, state, suburban and community language newspapers
- Ephemera including concert programs, menus, invitations, greeting cards, postcards, political campaign leaflets and advertising material
- Extensive range of posters for concerts, rock bands, dances, sporting events, travel and tourism, and social movements such as women's liberation and gay and lesbian subcultures
- Images documenting and recording people, events, landscapes and buildings in a range of formats including drawings, watercolours, prints, photographs, negatives, engravings and architectural plans
- Internet websites focussing on New South Wales events are available as archived links
- A representative range of popular fiction, including the crime, romance and fantasy genres, as well as comics
- Erotica including x-rated magazines published in NSW
- Interviews with well-known Australian identities as well as with ordinary Australians recollecting their lives
- A limited amount of realia usually confined to objects accompanying paper-based collections such as political and subculture badges, framed items, medals and prizes
- Sheet music mainly from the mid-nineteenth century with modern material printed in New South Wales
Some examples of unique or significant items
- At Work and Play - a Bicentennial Project to record how Australians lived prior to 1939, bringing together over 7000 personal photographs of country Australians
- Sam Hood collection of negatives - the work of a professional photographer based mainly in Sydney, this collection comprises more than 33,000 negatives from the years 1927-1957
- Australian Photographic Agency collection - over 48,000 negatives recording Sydney from the 1950s to the 1970s, a time of great social change
- The papers of Lillian Roxon, Australian journalist and author of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia
Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3086 ADD-ON 2192, MLMSS 3086 ADD-ON 914, MLMSS 3086 ADD-ON 898, MLMSS 3086 ADD-ON 884, MLMSS 3086 - Personal papers of many well-known popular writers, entertainers and sporting identities such as Jon Cleary, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 6382, MLMSS, John Birmingham, Valerie Parv, Patricia Lovell, Gwen Plumb, Damien Pignolet, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 5416, Bobby Limb, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3753 and Shane Gould
- Records of community groups such as the Ngunnagan Club and the Battlers for Kelly's Bush (MLMSS 5549)
- Business records of Australian publishers, including Angus and Robertson, Frank Johnson and Horan Wall and Walker, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3146 and ADD-ONs 1245 & 1304
- The papers of P R Stephensen - writer, publisher and literary collaborator with Frank Clune, traveller and documenter of Australian history.
Mitchell Library: MLMSS 1284 - The personal and business papers of Maggie Tabberer concerning fashion
- J C Williamson pictorial archive c. 1895-1970 - records of the productions of one of Australia's major theatrical companies.
Mitchell Library: MLMSS 2185 - The David Scott Mitchell collection of Erotica
Mitchell Library: S3/14a-d - The Mitchell Library collection of comics
Special collections
- Rainbow Archives - a project which aims to document aspects of the culture of the alternative movement from the 1960s to date, including peace groups, communal living, personal development, arts and craft and the move to rural areas.
Mitchell Library: MLMSS 5057 and ADD-ONs - New South Wales Bicentennial Oral History Collection - interviews with over 200 people who lived in NSW between 1900 and 1930.
Mitchell Library: MLOH 48 - Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras records - documenting the first Mardi Gras in 1978 to date, a significant event in Sydney social life, which complements other records of gay and lesbian organisations and the papers of individuals held in the Mitchell Library
- The Italians in NSW Project - a documentary record of the Italian presence in New South Wales, including personal papers such as those of broadcaster Mamma Lena Gustin Mitchell Library: MLMSS, Cy MLOH 133/1-14 and MLMSS 5288 ADD-ON 1982 and associations which reflect a range of cultural, social and political interests
- German Collecting Project - including the records of the Little Viennese Theatre in Sydney 1927-1990.
