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Newsflash:

On Monday 5 October, opening hours will be reduced. View the October long weekend opening hours.

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What’s got us talking

2020 Mona Brand Award

Learn more about this year's winners and the Mona Brand Award - made possible by a generous bequest to the NSW State Library Foundation from the trailblazing Australian playwright Mona Brand.

Information in your language

Find multilingual books, magazines, newspapers, dictionaries, websites, and more.

Woman on phone

Help transcribe Miles Franklin's final words

Take up the challenge and help transcribe the diaries of Miles Franklin: one of Australia's greatest writers.

Miles Franklin diaries photographed by Sophie Blackall

The Gatherings Order

Rake through our archives with historians, public health experts and scientists to trace the path of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. 

Collection buzz

Southern stars

The first printed European southern star chart joins the Library’s cartography collection.

Imagines coeli meridionales, printed 1781 from blocks created in 1515, by Johannes Stabius, cartographer, Albrecht Dürer, engraver

Read all about it

Historical newspapers are a world of wonderful surprises — anywhere you land within them.

Jimmy Lee, model, 6 years old, reading newspaper, January 1946 / photographed by Max Dupain

Marcia AM Clark – Sydney socialite and photographer

With an ardent passion for photography and a love of fast sports cars, the Sydney socialite Marcia AM Clark, born in 1913, was heir to a family fortune.

Marcia Clark in her Riley Imp, Point Piper Sydney, 1936, photographer unknown, vintage gelatin silver print

June Marsden: celebrity astrologer and ufologist

While June has long since slipped from public memory, astrology and psychic pursuits hold an interesting place in Australian media history.

June Marsden, famous astrologer of Sydney, Australia

What's old is new again

The Library has recently acquired a highly detailed world map, published in London in 1798. 

Featured events

Scholar Talk: Reimagining the Pacific, 1870 to 1970

Scholar Talks
Tuesday
Tuesday 6 October 2020 - 11am to 12pm
Free
Talk

This talk takes inspiration from Australian art historian Bernard Smith’s Imagining the Pacific published in 1992 as well as his authoritative earlier work, European Vision and the South Pacific published in 1960. Smith saw the Pacific as an ideological construction of the European imagination during the intense period of exploration in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  

Online

Author workshop with Kate and Jol Temple

Kids at the Library
Wednesday
Wednesday 7 October 2020 - 11am to 11:45am
Free
Workshop

Have you ever written a really good complaint letter? If not, then Kate and Jol Temple think you should!

Learning
Online

History Matters: Floods and Bushfires - Disaster Histories 

Wednesday
Wednesday 7 October 2020 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Free
Talk

Disasters have recently become a major field of study for public historians who explore the roles of history and memory in fostering public understanding of these events and developing resilience in the future. 

Online

Capturing Change

Thursday 8 October 2020 to Tuesday 13 October 2020
Free
Special event

Join us at the Library for a screening of Capturing Change, a documentary following the work of World Press Photo prize winning photographer, Matthew Abbott.