[A lean, middle-aged woman with long, dark hair] [FIONA KEMP] When I look at the collection that I've inherited from my father and my childhood house, it takes me back to a particular period in time. [A middle-aged, bespectacled man stands in front of shelves lined with model cars] [KIM OSBORN] It's fun to find an object that you like and then when you find another one and then another one, I think you're a collector. [A middle-aged, bespectacled woman with a shoulder-length bob] [KAYE OSBORN] Look, it really is an emotional value. [The interior of the Mitchell Building of the State Library of NSW] [RICHARD NEVILLE] I think in a way, the fact that Mitchell was such an intelligent, passionate collector almost seemed to sort of infect the whole organisation. His kind of passion, his intelligence, his DNA, I suppose, has been passed down through library officers ever since. [A quote is etched into the stones of a sandstone wall inside the State Library. Carved beams and pillars support the ornate ceiling] [A Passion For Collecting] [Alex Byrne, the State Librarian and CEO of the State Library of NSW is a middle-aged, bespectacled man dressed in a light grey suit. He sits on a desk in an office with framed maps on the wall] [ALEX BYRNE] Well, the State Library of NSW is one of the really great libraries of the world. We're known for our fantastic collections on Australasia, Oceania, on this part of the world, and they're incredibly rich in terms of all sorts of media. [A large antique map on marble with writing in Latin is fitted into the floor of the Library] [An antique artefact is removed from a wooden box] [Alexander Sussman, the Coordinator, Collection Development and Acquisitions, is a bald man with a neatly-trimmed beard. He sits at a desk in an office] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] So above and beyond all else, this library seeks to collect material that documents the life of NSW. [A young man pulls a cart into a storage facility] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] The library also collects material that meets the information needs of the people of NSW. [People sit at tables in the main reading room of the Mitchell Building] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] So reference material, encyclopaedias, things that aren't necessarily from NSW or about Australia. [Various shelves in storage areas and in the main library are stacked with books] [The glass-panelled doorway to the Mitchell Building with its clock embedded into the intersection of stairways] [RICHARD NEVILLE] If you want to write something about the history of Australia or about the history of Australia's relationship to the rest of the world or about the way people have lived, and if you want to understand the past you've really got to come back to collections such as ours. [Dressed in a black suit, Richard Neville, the Mitchell Librarian sits at a table in the library] [Shelved filled with books line the walls of the Mitchell Building] [Portraits of two men - The Collectors - David Scott Mitchell, 1836-1907, and Sir William Dixson, 1872-1952] [The portrait of a bearded David Scott Mitchell] [RICHARD NEVILLE] David Scott Mitchell collected printed books, he collected manuscripts, he collected pamphlets, he collected diaries, he collected letters. [Various antique papers, books and letters] [RICHARD NEVILLE] Anything that he could find that he thought reflected on the history of Australia he was determined to acquire. [The sandstone facade with tall pillars standing above the stairs of the State Library of NSW] [RICHARD NEVILLE] But he saw his monument very much as this thing that he hoped the government would create which would be the Mitchell Library. [A black-and-white, faded photograph of a large house with two figures standing in the garden] [RICHARD NEVILLE] His father was a wealthy medical man but they also had estates up in the Hunter Valley which were pastoral estates and also coal. [An old photograph of an elderly man] [The portrait of the bust of a young, bearded man] [RICHARD NEVILLE] He lived the life of a wealthy young gentleman, but as he grew older, he began to focus his life onto building his collection. [A black-and-white photograph of a room with books on shelves and tables. Curios and small, framed photographs line the mantelpiece. A large painting hangs over it] [RICHARD NEVILLE] Every Monday morning, he'd hop in a cab and head out to the local bookstores. [An old photo of a street with houses lining the footpath. A motor car is parked by the roadside] [RICHARD NEVILLE] He was quite competitive, quite ruthless. [Richard Neville sits at a table with old, leather-bound books beside him and shelves of books enclosed in glass-fronted cupboards behind him] [RICHARD NEVILLE] He would often come across piles that other collectors had put together in various bookshops and he'd just walk up to them and take what he wanted. [A black-and-white photo of a room stacked with books from floor to ceiling] [RICHARD NEVILLE] When he knew he had to have something, he went all out to make sure that he got it. [A faded, black-and-white photograph of a street lined with shops] [Inside the library] [RICHARD NEVILLE] One thing he was desperate to acquire was the Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks - the foundation document of European settlement in Australia. [A hand-written journal with fading ink on the pages. A piece of paper with the lion coat of arms of Alfred Lee is pasted inside the front cover] [RICHARD NEVILLE] Alfred Lee, his fellow competitor, bought it in London in the 1880s and Mitchell clearly was incredibly jealous. [An old portrait of DS Mitchell] [RICHARD NEVILLE] He eventually decided to buy Alfred Lee's entire collection to acquire Sir Joseph Banks' Endeavour Journal. [A black-and-white photograph of a room lined with shelves of books] [Richard Neville in the library] [RICHARD NEVILLE] So he seems to have acquired things cunningly but also very intelligently. [Sketches of an elderly gentleman in a long coat and top hat] [RICHARD NEVILLE] He really knew what he was doing. [A black-and-white photograph of a two-storey townhouse] [RICHARD NEVILLE] David Scott Mitchell's house in 17 Darlinghurst Road was notorious. [Photos of rooms stacked with books on shelves, tables and the floor] [RICHARD NEVILLE] Every single space was covered in books and it is said that his faithful housekeeper, Sarah, even her room up the top of the house... She had to squeeze in amongst all David Scott Mitchell's collection. [Richard Neville inside the library] [RICHARD NEVILLE] I think David Scott Mitchell's collecting was built around a sense that he was making something that was of national significance. [Elise Edmonds, the maps librarian, a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, stands in a storage facility with lines of metal painting racks behind her] [ELISE EDMONDS] Sir William Dixson was born in Sydney in 1870. He was born into a quite wealthy family. [A black-and-white photograph of a man with a short, pointed beard and dressed in a dark suit. He looks at us with a pen and leather-bound notepad in his hands] [ELISE EDMONDS] He really focused on collecting artworks that would supplement Mitchell's collection of manuscripts and books. [Elise opens a door with a key card, then pulls out a metal picture rack with framed paintings on it] [Paintings of landscapes] [MAGGIE PATTON] Sir William Dixson was quite a discerning collector. And, he was a researcher, he was really interested in what he was buying. [Maggie Patton, the manager for Original Materials, a short-haired middle-aged woman stands in the library] [MAGGIE PATTON] And he really had an interest in why he was buying it, and he would create lists. [A hand-written list pasted inside an old book] [MAGGIE PATTON] He would detail names and events that were talked about in a manuscript piece. [Maggie Patton in the library] [MAGGIE PATTON] So he has a whole different aspect to his collection which is really quite interesting. [Various painted portraits] [ELISE EDMONDS] I think that the artworks illustrate his own personal interests and passions. [Elise Edmonds inside the storage facility] [ELISE EDMONDS] There are portraits of notable characters in Australian history. He then collected other artworks that really depicted the topography and views of Sydney and NSW. [Landscape paintings in gilded frames hang on a picture rack] [ELISE EDMONDS] He trained as an engineer but he became more and more involved with his own collecting interests. [A large, colourful map within a simple wooden frame] [ELISE EDMONDS] In terms of geography and navigation, we have an amazing map collection that he has given to us, and that basically traces the exploration of the southern seas and documenting the discoveries of the Australian coastline. [Elise Edmonds inside the storage facility] [ELISE EDMONDS] Sir William Dixson also collected curios or we call them realia. They're objects and they can range from very, very small right through to something large. For example our collector's chest. [Elise opens the various drawers and panels of a wooden chest, revealing paintings and shells] [ELISE EDMONDS] We also take material out, particularly to regional NSW, to show people out there the real objects. [Preserving Collections] [A stack of old, frayed sheets of paper. Lang Ngo, a senior conservator, sits at a workbench dressed in a white lab coat] [LANG NGO] In preservation, we've come across items in the collection ranging from wooden artefacts, sculptures, scrimshaw, which is usually ivory or tusks. [Drawings of ships on a pair of ivory tusks. Using a small brush, Lang Ngo restores an old photograph of a young man dressed in shorts] [LANG NGO] We have photographs, we have books we have paintings, oil paintings... If something is going on display or an exhibition, then we might give the item a very intense treatment. [People go through books in the reading room of the Mitchell Building] [LANG NGO] If the item is just going out to a reader in the reading room, we might actually just do really simple repairs. [Lang Ngo at the workbench] [LANG NGO] We, as conservators, conform to a code of ethics and we actually look at what materials we use and how we perform the treatment. [Lang Ngo restores the photograph of the young man with paints and a thin brush] [LANG NGO] We also document what we do to make sure that in the future other conservators can see what we've done, and if they wanted to reverse the treatment, that would be possible. [Trish Leen, a short-haired, bespectacled conservator] [TRISH LEEN] This is an example of an item that went out on loan. It's a letter written in 1917. [A hand-written letter in blue ink on white is displayed upon a small white cushion] [TRISH LEEN] The Germans were retreating and they left a lot of items behind, and the Australian soldiers picked up a few items. Rob wrote this letter to May who lived in Marrickville. It's written on a cuff which is a separate part of a man's attire. [A faded address in upper case letters is written on the top of a shirt cuff. Trish Leen unfolds the cuff to reveal the stained letter] [TRISH LEEN] Because it's linen, it's actually quite sturdy and as for the dirt that you can see on it, we wouldn't actually remove this because this dirt here could well have come from the trenches in the First World War. [All Collections Great & Small] [Fiona Kemp, a middle-aged artist and clinical psychologist is seated on an armchair] [FIONA KEMP] For me, collecting, or the items that have come to me through that collection often act as a memory cue, for me, about a particular period of my life with my father in terms of the items of our childhood. [Old colour photograph of a house, a man on a balcony, photographs of a boy and a girl with horses and on the beach] [FIONA KEMP] He was trying to preserve something about that period of time. [Fiona on the armchair] [FIONA KEMP] Years later, my aunt moved into the house and then finally when she moved into a nursing home, we needed to clear the contents out of the house. [A handful of plastic drink stirrers are placed upon an unfolded world map] [Canvas artwork of horses and a row of old riding boots] [FIONA KEMP] So going back into that house was like a time warp back into my childhood. So when I went into my bedroom, things that I had put up there when I was 10 or 11 years of age still hanging on the walls... I suppose I selected certain things that I have kept. For example, there's a horsey theme. Riding boots from when I was very little, baby pair of jodhpurs, dresses that I wore in childhood... [A girl's clothes and old maps] [FIONA KEMP] And then other elements around the house. [Kim Osborn, a middle-aged private collector wearing glasses stands in front of shelves lined with models of shops and cars] [KIM OSBORN] I collect cars, predominantly 1:18 scale models, which obviously you can see behind me, mainly because I started collecting them with my son when he was considerably younger and he lost interest in it. My father being a motor mechanic, retired now, used to buy the older vehicles. [Black-and-white photographs of a young boy playing with various cars] [KIM OSBORN] Now, we grew up in the '60s and the older vehicles were Dodges and Buicks, that sort of thing. [Model of vintage cars are displayed on shelves] [KIM OSBORN] But from the '30s, I've got a bit of a nostalgic feel for those vehicles. I also find that there's more design to them. They've got a nicer feel than the new cars, which is very square and edgy. The value in the collection is really a personal thing. [Kim Osborn holds up two model cars] [KIM OSBORN] I never collected them to make a profit on them and I initially started saying I'd never keep them in boxes, they were to enjoy, but unfortunately over a period of time you run out of space. [Kim and his wife, Kaye, pose beside a table with ceramics displayed on it] [KIM OSBORN] We do collect because it's fun to have and enjoy objects but I don't think we're obsessive about collecting other things. [A display of a model garage. Old oil cans are stacked on a top shelf. An old model of a bicycle] [KIM OSBORN] My wife keeps telling me, 'What are you going to do with all these cars?' I then can say to her, 'Why have you got all this pottery?' [Kaye Osborn is seated on a leather armchair beside a display of pastel coloured ceramics] [KAYE OSBORN] I just got a fascination for Nell McCredie who was a Sydney potter. I saw quite a few pieces in markets, small pieces, very cheap, they weren't expensive at all. Of course I think that they're worth a lot more. She actually did certain styles. And of course her standard greens, her beautiful, sort of pastelly sort of sea-coloured greens. And she did vases. She did all sorts of things. Obviously I couldn't afford some of the more expensive ones because I don't know if you know but collectors like to get things quite cheaply, they like to get them for nothing a lot of the time. And of course my husband also loves going around and he has picked up a couple of pieces on the throw-outs. [Fiona Kemp is seated on a red armchair] [FIONA KEMP] There are complex reasons and a whole variety of reasons why people might collect items, and I think most of us collect something at some stage in our lives. [A display of model cars, animal figurines, riding boots, old maps and a girl's clothes] [FIONA KEMP] Some of those reasons might be things like the social aspect of collecting that involves coming together. Some people are really into the chase of collecting. Others like a sense of completion and collecting can also be about a sense of self and filling a space within us. [Katrina Milliner, a student of Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College sits with a friend at a table. Small piles of coins are on the table] [KATRINA MILLINER] I collect coins but it's not only my collection, it's my family's collection. It was my great grandfather's, who... he sort of passed it down to my grandfather. Now me and my grandfather sort of share the collection. He'll just talk about it and it's a really nice thing because it's very sentimental. We connect through these coins. [Alan Davies, the curator of photographs at the Library, is in a room with photographic equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] Look, I'm a great fan of photography and always have been. I'm very fortunate in that I've been printing my own work since I was 14 for instance so I've always been involved in photography. Anyone who comes to my home realises there are all these photographs around the walls and they are obviously things that I've liked, things that I've collected over a long period of time. [A black-and-white photograph of a young man taking a picture with an old field camera] [ALAN DAVIES] I even used to collect cameras at one stage and I remember getting an awful shock some years ago to realise a camera I've had in my room for 25 years actually belonged to a photographer called George Caddy - the guy who used to take pictures of gymnasts on Bondi Beach. [Black-and-white images of male and female gymnasts performing on a beach] [ALAN DAVIES] Going into a collector's home, you learn something about their personality. [Alan Davies sits amongst photographic equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] In the same way, a colleague came to my house who didn't really know I had so many strange things and said, 'Oh, that's who you are.' That's what it's about. [An old black-and-white photo of the two-storey Surveyor Inn General, Australia's oldest licensed inn] [Black-and-white images of men working in various places] [ALAN DAVIES] Art galleries collect objects for the wall, we collect images that show us something, tell us something. [Black-and-white photos of men chatting, men around a dead whale, cricketers walking onto the pitch, a busy city street, an old portrait, and photos of a parade] [ALAN DAVIES] We've got everything from Australia's oldest known photograph through to images made in the last few weeks. [Colour photos of people from various ethnicities in their family homes] [Alan Davies is seated amongst photographic equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] I think the most interesting collection from the early 20th century is a guy called Sam Hood. [A black-and-white photo of a woman standing in a shop doorway. The walls and window are covered in writing] [Photos of men dressed in suits and hats standing with hands in their pockets, of men working] [ALAN DAVIES] And he was trying to show the bad side of Sydney. We suddenly, for the first time, had pictures of unemployment camps, people living in squalor. [A black-and-white photo of women serving children food] [Photos of a large house and two women standing outside a large store] [A black-and-white image of two women crossing an empty street. One woman wheels a bicycle] [ALAN DAVIES] We have to have photographers showing us how wealthy people live, how people live in the far west of the state, how people live - mums in caravans... [A collection of photographs of people from a poorer part of town] [A colour photograph of a group of swimmers coming out of the water] [Photos of protests and parades, a photograph of a family in traditional Tongan attire] [The Gift of Collecting] [Maggie Patton stands beside a table with a leather-bound edition of Chaucer placed on it] [MAGGIE PATTON] The library's received quite a few interesting formed collections. So this is when someone has a particular interest in a particular type of book or a particular subject area. [Various editions of Don Quixote are displayed] [MAGGIE PATTON] So back in 1997, one of the collections that we received was the Cervantes collection. So this is over 1,100 books of Don Quixote. [Maggie Patton inside the library] [MAGGIE PATTON] Obviously it's not Australian but because it's such a fantastic representation of such an important work, the first modern novel, it does get a lot of attention. [Maggie goes through a card catalogue, then standing in front of a wall lined with bookshelves, she flips through an old book and points to a faded inscription] [MAGGIE PATTON] When we're offered a collection, there are a few things that we'll consider - whether or not other libraries in Australia have a similar collection, whether or not it's better that some things are kept together. [Leather-bound books are displayed on shelves] [MAGGIE PATTON] Sometimes it's the amount of books and how we're going to house them and what condition they are in. [Glenn Barkley, a collector and curator, stands beside a table covered in stacks of papers and booklets] [GLENN BARKLEY] The collection that I've given to the library is my zine collection. I think there's about 600 or so things. A zine is a cheaply made book. Let's say we call it a book. This is a classic format zine. [Glenn opens a zine. Inside are sketches of people and groups of people] [GLENN BARKLEY] It's A4 that's just been photocopied and then simply folded and stapled. Zine obviously grows out of the word 'magazine'. So it's quite often something that's been created by fans or created by artists. They might be quite personal. It might be poetry, it might be commentary. It might be photography... [Glenn displays zines of various sizes and with drawings and photographs in them] [GLENN BARKLEY] I got in touch with the librarian who I knew was looking for zines. They sent me their list. I was going to give them a few things and then when I saw the list and how small the list was I just thought for the good of the people, I'll give my whole collection away. One of the reasons why I wanted to give the collection to the State Library - and I really love this - is if someone wants to look at these, someone has to go and get them and they're allowed to look at them. [Glenn opens a small folded zine and removes a smaller zine from within a fold] [GLENN BARKLEY] If they're in an art museum or an art gallery, they're in a vitrine, you can't touch them. That very important part of it, that looking part, has gone. And that to me denies the book in a way. [Glenn displays various zines] [GLENN BARKLEY] These things are ephemeral. They're sort of outside of the official channels. But because of that, there's more of an imperative to make sure that they're captured. Captured is the wrong word, but sometimes I think that's true. Institutions do capture things. They're not sort of in the wild anymore. Maybe in, I don't know, 20 years' time, 50 years' time, you'll have the mass media idea about politics and then when you look through here you get this other sense of politics which is all about satire, and very sort of underground, and maybe what younger people were thinking about politicians and sort of issues of the day. [Collecting the Future] [Alexander Sussman is seated in an office] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] I don't know in the future what future researchers will want to uncover and that's the great thing which is why I'm very clear to have no bias in the collecting of material from NSW. [The sandstone facade of the State Library of NSW] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] If it documents life in NSW, I will go after it like a dog with a bone. How people use it in the future will hopefully surprise us. [Alex Byrne is seated on a table in an office] [ALEX BYRNE] It's a golden age for libraries. I'm really delighted to be a librarian. [People use a computer in the library] [ALEX BYRNE] Technology has enabled us to reinvent ourselves. We can reach out to people all over the state. We support the roll-out of digital services into the public libraries. [The glass ceiling and book-lined walls of the Mitchell Building] [ALEX BYRNE] And when you come into those public libraries or into a great library like the State Library, they look different to libraries of the past. [People use their laptop and mobile devices in a reading room of the library] [ALEX BYRNE] They still have books, but they're not dominated by books, they're dominated by interaction between people. They're looking things up online. Increasingly using their own handheld devices rather than machines that we provide. [Alex Byrne in an office] [ALEX BYRNE] They're looking at e-books and e-journals and databases, as well as books on shelves. [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] One of the things that's involved in collecting here, that people often don't realise is the volume that we get in. [Alexander Sussman in an office] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] We're not talking about just a few pieces a day, we're talking about high volume of 20,000 to 30,000 pieces being received in every year. [Large metal shelves filled with books and files inside a storage facility] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] It's one thing to get 20,000-30,000 pieces of material during the year. [A young man pushes a cart through an aisle within the storage facility] [Alexander Sussman in an office] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] But you've got to let people know that you've got that material, you've got to provide access that's easy for people. [People use the computer facilities in the Library] [ALEXANDER SUSSMAN] We're actually also doing that role as well and that access role is vitally important. You may have it, but you've got to be able to find it. [Alan Davies sits in a room with photographic equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] The greatest benefit of digital photography is the ability to disseminate the images. [A young woman scans images in a dimly-lit room] [ALAN DAVIES] Things are scanned here in the lab and then put onto the net so people can see them. Previously people really had to come into the library and sort of rummage through hard photographs. [ALAN DAVIES] Now with digital we can put it up on the net, you can look at it yourself, you can print it off yourself. [Images are scanned and digitised] [Alan Davies amongst equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] It's basically making things accessible to the public for the first time. And we have so much material here to digitise, it's a massive, massive job. [A technician takes a picture of a metal artefact] [The sandstone building of the State Library] [Richard Neville is seated at a table in the library] [RICHARD NEVILLE] Increasingly libraries are moving to collecting digital things. People often don't think that their emails and their office files have significance, but clearly those are the records of the future, that future historians will want to come back to looking towards. So libraries are increasingly going to be moving into the digital space. [People access resources on computers in the library] [Alex Byrne inside an office] [ALEX BYRNE] Images are loaded onto the web. People use Twitter, Facebook, a whole host of tools to communicate, to share. [A woman at a table goes through a book while another beside her accesses resources in a laptop] [ALEX BYRNE] And we know, everybody knows, that tools like Twitter won't last forever. They'll be replaced by other things. So we have to identify preservation formats to keep the key information, the key messages, long into the future. [Richard Neville in the library] [RICHARD NEVILLE] The work of historians, like Manning-Clark or Henry Reynolds or Geoffrey Blainey which have had such an impact on the way we think about ourselves, they've all been based on, and written from, archival collections such as library collections. [People work at tables inside the Mitchell Building] [Glenn Barkley stands beside his collection of zines] [GLENN BARKLEY] It's almost my whole life I've been collecting something. Some collections I still have, some I've given away, some I've sold. So, when I start to sort of list those things, they're quite... I have to be collecting something, I can't stop. [Alan Davies inside the room with equipment] [ALAN DAVIES] Libraries need collectors. If it weren't for these people, we wouldn't have all these wonderful things. [Alexander Sussman points to an image inside a book] [Maggie Patton removes the leather case of the Chaucer edition] [A drawing of a man and his horse inside an old edition of Don Quixote] [Old books are displayed] [ALAN DAVIES] Those things that are commonplace to us today might be terribly important in the future. I guess in some measure, if I knew what to collect today to make a fortune in the future, I'd do it, but I'm pleased to say most collectors collect because they like things. And that's really good. [The interrobang mark - the logo of the State Library of NSW]