Cirrus@Austlit

'A mysterious talking cat invites children through the grand doors of the State Library of NSW in Sydney. It’s the Est Cat, who wants to show them the biggest, the smallest, the strangest, the rarest and the gluggiest objects to be found there! They visit secret places, get followed by ghosts, spy special treasures and finally learn the Est Cat’s secret.

'This delightful tale introduces readers to some of the weird and wonderful artefacts of Australian history, where they live, and the people who look after them.'

Source : publisher's blurb

Launched on 4 May 2020, The Diary Files was intended as an 'online community diary' to collect 'stories, poems, lyrics, thoughts and reflections of the people of NSW and beyond' during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The State Librarian, John Vallance, noted in the press release for the launch of the project:

We want to document this year more than ever, so when researchers look back in 50 or 100 years’ time they’ll be able to access a rich and diverse slice of history and understand what it was like for people living through a pandemic.

Entries were up to 300 works, and took a range of forms.

Source: State Library of New South Wales press release, 4 May 2020.

'In Australia, roughly 90% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages still spoken today are considered endangered, and many communities are doing extraordinary work to protect, promote and pass on their languages. These languages are at the core of our memories, our expression and our ability to sustain our cultures and identities, and their destruction has had profound on Aboriginal people in Australia since 1788.

'There were more than 250 languages spoken in Australia before 1788, and even more dialects. Our languages are among the oldest on the planet, and include ancient sign languages and non-verbal forms of communicating still practised throughout Australia.' (Exhibition introduction)

'Poems are a response to the donation in 1978 to the State Library of NSW of the Clifton Cappie Towle collection. This collection includes more than a thousand photographs showing Aboriginal weapons and implements, rock art, ceremonial sites, shell middens and stone arrangements from all parts of NSW, all photographed between about 1920 and 1940. The State Library of NSW is presenting an exhibition of these works, containing some of the most beautiful, haunting images of carved trees collected by Clifton Cappie Towle before his death in 1946.' (Source: TROVE)

ONE Hundred was published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mitchell Library, Sydney. The book ties in with the 2010 State Library of New South Wales exhibition that featured manuscripts, pictures, books and other objects from the library's collection.

'In celebration of our centenary the Mitchell Library presents ONE Hundred from 9 March - 16 June 2010. ONE Hundred reaches down into the riches of the Library's incomparable and internationally renowned collection and presents just one hundred items which tell, in their unique and surprising way, some aspect of the Australian and Pacific story.

'Founded on the personal collection of wealthy Sydney book collector, David Scott Mitchell, who also provided a sizeable endowment, the Library has been actively collecting for a century... Ranging in date from the late 1400s to 2008, the exhibition includes manuscripts, pictures, maps, books, oral histories, and objects: a rollcall of the famous and the notorious; the quiet achievers and the noisy larrikins; the conventional and the rebels; the remembered and the unjustly forgotten, all with a fascinating story to tell.'

Objects from the exhibition are displayed on ONE Hundred Online. The website also details the history of the State Library revealing 'some of the historic images and archival footage that tell the stories of both the Library and our nation'.

[Source: ONE Hundred, State Library of New South Wales, http://www.onehundred.sl.nsw.gov.au/ (sighted: 02/03/2010]

An exhibition of early illustrations from Norman Lindsay's original drawings for The Magic Pudding (1918) together with the puppet watercolours drawn for Peter Scriven's 1960 marionette puppet show of the children's classic. The exhibition also includes some of Scriven's puppets.

'All works on paper are by Norman Lindsay (1879-1969). Items 1-15 are watercolours purchased in 2008. Items 16-19 were received by bequest of Sir William Dixson in 1952. Puppets were produced for the Magic Pudding puppet show by Peter Scriven (1930-1998) and are kindly lent by SBW/NIDA Archives and Performing Arts Collection.'

Source: The State Library of New South Wales website, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/
Sighted: 07/01/2009

'The personal diaries of Miles Franklin - displayed for the first time along with letters, literary papers, photo albums and personal belongings - reveal the secrets and little-known stories of one of twentieth century Australia's literary greats. Although Miles Franklin published 15 books in her lifetime, she increasingly feared that nothing she wrote would match the success of her astonishing first novel, My Brilliant Career, published in 1901.

This exhibition highlights Franklin's little-known career overseas, including her pioneering work with the Women's Trade Union League in Chicago from 1908 to 1915 and as a cook in Macedonia during World War I.'

(Source: The State Library of New South Wales website, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/miles/)

'Miles Franklin wrote the first of these letters at Brindabella in 1887, over a decade before she started My Brilliant Career, the novel that famously propelled her out of the bush and on to Sydney and the world. The correspondence follows her to the Women′s Trade Union League in Chicago, to war work in the Balkans, to a return to writing in London, and finally home in the 1930s.

'After her nearly thirty years away, the letters now more than ever allowed Miles to share with "her congenials" - friends in England, Europe, the USA and Australia - experiences, memories and, above all, her commitment to Australian literature. The last letter in this collection was written only sixteen days before her death.

'As well as Miles Franklin′s own witty and provocative correspondence, the selection includes letters from her life-long friends, such as Alice Henry and Vida Goldstein, Katharine Susannah Pritchard, Dymphna Cusack and Beatrice Davis.

'Selected and edited by Jill Roe, the letters crackle with the surprises of a life richly lived.' (From the publisher's website, second edition.)

'The stories and illustrations appearing in this book are the work of young people who attended the Me and My Place series of workshops at the State Library of NSW, during the Sydney Writers' Festival in 1992.'

(Source: Introduction to Me and My Place : A Notebook of First Ideas from the Sydney Writers' Festival Young People's Workshop Series.)