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Newsflash:

Due to essential upgrades, access to digital images will be temporarily unavailable between 5 pm and 10 pm AEST on Sunday, 21 July 2019.

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What’s got us talking

Strategic Plan

We’re turning the Library inside out to better serve the changing needs of our diverse communities.

Cover of the Library's Strategic Plan

Free Kids' Tours

Explore the magnificent Mitchell Library and discover some quirky stories these school holidays!

Kids on a tour in the Library's paintings gallery.

Mukurtu artist announcement

We're excited to launch a new collaboration with Gamilaraay and Mandandanji artist and animator, Jake Duczynski! Read the blog for more details.

Jake Duczynski

The Burial Files

Listen to the latest podcast episode – Digging up the dead – now.

Woman looking at the Burial Files podcast on her phone screen.

Collection buzz

Flash Mob

Photographs from the Deadly Awards by Jamie James.

Jazz Down Under

Scrapbooks compiled by the father of Australian jazz, Graeme Bell (1914 – 2012).

Graeme Bell's Jazz Scrapbook

Watercolour views of Sydney in the middle years of the 19th century

The Library has recently aquired a collection of six watercolours by Jacob Janssen (1779-1856).

A painting of a view of Government House, with emus in the garden in the foreground and a horseman on the garden track.

Across the curator’s desk: House construction notebook, 1913

Anna Corkhill, curator in the Library's Research and Discovery team, shares a house construction notebook from 1913.

Sketch for the design of a cottage

The Treaty of Waitangi 1840

On 6 February some 45 chiefs signed a ‘Treaty of Cession’, now known as the Treaty of Waitangi.

Elaborate running writing covers this aged document. Marks of broken dark red wax seals mark the bottom and left side edges of the document.

Across the curator's desk: Peter Hall's 1968 travel sketchbook

Anna Corkhill, curator in the Library's Research and Discovery team, shares a sketchbook from a crucial stage in the development of the Sydney Opera House. 

Sketchbook with pencil drawing of Sydney Opera House

Book of Hours

View our newly digitised Book of Hours, featuring 14 large miniatures, framed by pink marble columns or brown bands, and enter the world of an illuminated manuscript.

Places of Industry - works by Jeff Rigby

The Library has recently acquired a series of 25 works by Blue Mountains-based artist Jeff Rigby.

Delprats Mine

Sydney Female Refuge Society papers, 1863–1911

The Library has just completed digitising minute books of the Sydney Female Refuge Society which provide a remarkable insight into prostitution in nineteenth-century Sydney.

Covers of Sydney Female Refuge Annual Reports

Featured events

Rare Books: Librarians' Favourites from the Rare Book Collection

Lifelong learning
Thursday
Thursday 25 July 2019 - 10:30am to 12:30pm
Talk

Discover the breadth and depth of the State Library's Rare Book collection

Talking Deadly: Subverting & Co-opting the Colonial Archive

Indigenous
Talking Deadly
Wednesday
Wednesday 31 July 2019 - 6pm to 7pm
Talk

Join Callum Clayton-Dixon for his talk on how the members of the Armidale Aboriginal community, having identified the need for a community-driven and self-determining language revival effort at a local level, established the Anaiwan Language Revival Program.

Callum Clayton-Dixon

Living Language research day

Friday
Friday 2 August 2019 - 8:30am to 4:30pm
Special event

Join guest speakers, linguists and the Library’s Indigenous team as we explore the extensive language collections held at the State Library of NSW.

Beerabahn or MacGill, Chief of Bartabah or Lake Macquarie, [1830?] / lithograph by H. B. W. Allan

A Babble of Voices: Using Oral History Collections

Wednesday
Wednesday 7 August 2019 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Talk

Oral history collections have been around for decades, but with the advent of digital technology our access to and use of collections is changing. Curators from two key repositories will highlight elements of their collection, and reflect on changing delivery and use by practitioners.