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What’s got us talking

Beyond Ancestry and FindMyPast - Family History Month

The Library has a range of online resources that allow you to continue your journey of discovery from home.

Drawing of George Barrington from Early Australian Portraits 1778-1908 collection

The year's best in history

Who made the 2018 NSW Premier’s History Awards shortlists? Find out here.

Covers of books shortlisted for the 2018 NSW Premier’s History Awards

Learning Services on the road

FAR Out!  original collection materials visiting country schools

children and woman looking at objects on a table

Making the family skeleton dance

Researching family history is an immensely rewarding endeavour. At a certain point however, many researchers arrive at an important question: What next?

The family history shelves in the State Library of NSW stack, July 2018.

Collection buzz

Capturing counter-culture

These recently digitised photographs by Roger Marchant from the 1970s and 80s are a time capsule of the early alternative lifestyle movement in Australia.

Rainbow Archives - Roger Marchant

Coins from the Sir William Dixson collection

A spotlight on Australia’s early sovereigns.

Sovereign, 1855, Sydney Mint, Sir William Dixson Collection

Historic ceremony at Mungo National Park

New oral history collection about the historic Mungo Man repatriation process.   

Mungo Man: Interview subjects Maureen Reyland, Mary Pappin and Dawn Smith

A celestial pocket globe to complete the pair

The Library has recently acquired a celestial pocket globe from c1791 by London globemakers John and William Cary. 

Cary's New Celestial Pocket Globe 1791

Recent acquisitions on printing and papermaking

The Library actively collects material relating to the publishing industry, including the history of printing, paper making, book binding, intaglio, lithography and other production techniques.

Coloured pattern containing red, blue and yellow shapes

How we remember

One hundred years after troops landed at Gallipoli, the Library commissioned five professional photographers to document what the people of New South Wales did on 25 April 2015.

Featured events

Family Fun - Find your treasure

Sunday 26 August 2018 - 11am to 2pm

Leigh Hobbs and Mr Chicken will be in the building to help us celebrate Book Week 2018.

Author/illustrator Leigh Hobbs

Curator Talk: Securing the Shadow 'ere the Substance Fade

Thursday 6 September 2018 - 1:30pm to 3pm

Margot Riley will be showcasing items from the collection which shed a light on colonial mourning practices including rare examples of post-mortem portraiture from the era.

Scholar Talk: Life and Death in the Library

Friday 7 September 2018 - 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Join four of the Library's esteemed Fellows for a conversation with Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian about some of their more surprising finds from the Library's collections.

 

Book and skull image

Curator Talk: Mourning Practices & Memorial Portraiture

Saturday 8 September 2018 - 2pm to 3pm

As part of History Week 2018, curator Margot Riley will explore the prevalence of memorial portraiture in Australia, and the observance of mourning etiquette, as evidenced through the collections of the Library.