The Australian History & Literature Collection covers Aboriginal culture and history, Australian history, literature, biography, geography and travel. Materials about the discovery and settlement of Victoria through the present day provide a unique insight into the history and development of Victoria and its people. Collecting is comprehensive for Victoria, and at a level to support sustained research in other areas.
Other subjects relating to Australia are included in the Redmond Barry Collection.
Major strengths of the Australian History and Literature collection are:
The collection of 19th- and 20th-century parliamentary papers, debates, and gazettes of all Australian state and territory governments is of major research significance. Microform and web-based versions are used where possible to preserve the now rare and often unwieldy originals. Indexes and in-house finding guides are extensive. More information about government publications can be found in the Redmond Barry section.
Other major strengths include collections of:
All formats are collected: books, pamphlets, journals, ephemera, microform, multimedia, CD-ROMs, web-based resources, data sets and e-journals.
The Library aims to collect material on Victoria’s indigenous population comprehensively. Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait cultures and histories are covered in all their aspects. Biography is a major topic, as is contact history, and the Collection holds many works on social and political conditions. Anthropological studies of Australian Aboriginal people are a collection strength, as are works on archaeology which relate to the origins of Australian Aboriginal people.
The Library recognises that other specialised collecting bodies may have strong complementary collections, and will attempt to cooperate rather than compete in collection building. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra, for example, has built up a strong collection of print and other material in this area.
The Library acquires creative writing by Victorians or with a Victorian setting comprehensively, regardless of language, genre or literary merit. Other Australian writing and material on Australian literature in general are acquired at a research level. Indexes, digital databases, anthologies and bibliographies form a strong reference collection, and provide access to an in-depth collection of poetry, drama, and fiction.
Collected works of poetry are acquired to provide a representative selection. Most works of literary criticism and all significant journals of new writing and commentary are collected. Material published overseas is also acquired. The Library collects Australian literature of all kinds, including essays, correspondence and other minor genres. Variant editions of Australian literary works are acquired, as are all editions of Victorian works. Translations of Australian works into other languages are collected; for example, Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves is held in Chinese, French, Polish, German and Swedish.
The Library acquires material relating to the history of Australia at a research level, and material relating to Victoria comprehensively. Ephemera about local Victorian areas is collected, primarily by donation. Published works about oral history are also collected.
The Library cooperates with other collecting institutions such as the National Library, the other state libraries and public libraries, many of which have significant collections of Victorian and local history materials, in order to rationalise resources and participate in national planning. Other local collecting agencies such as historical societies and museums which, like public libraries, have a closeness to their community, have an advantage which the Library lacks in collecting local history, ephemera and local material. The Library endeavours to cooperate closely with local collecting agencies to ensure that long-term preservation of and access to local studies material are maximised.
The Collection’s strengths lie in works relating to Australia during wars; both world wars, the Boer War, the Vietnam War, and more recent conflicts are well represented.
The Library was part of the long-running Australian Joint Copying Project, to copy onto microfilm material relating to Australia and the Pacific held in repositories in the United Kingdom. Over 7000 reels of film were made from materials held in the United Kingdom’s Public Record Office. These are organised by the department or agency of the British Government that created and assembled the records, such as the Colonial Office, Home Office, Treasury or Admiralty. They are a rich resource for many types of research.
All Victorian biographies are collected, and works about Australians are collected to form a strong research collection. Selected published family histories are acquired. Biographical indexes and dictionaries contribute to an extensive reference collection. Biographical works are particularly strong in political, literary and sporting figures. Ephemera about Australians, and particularly Victorians, is also collected.
Early European voyages of discovery and exploration of Australia are a major strength, as are personal accounts of early European travels in Australia.
Material covering Victoria is collected comprehensively, and that covering Australia is collected at a research level. All aspects of historical geography, physical and human geography, patterns of human settlement and landscape change in Australia are collected. There is a strong collection of gazetteers, travel guides and books on the meaning and history of place names.
Ephemera constitutes an important record of Victorian social life, customs, popular culture and political viewpoints. The Library acquires most of its ephemera by donation, concentrating on items published in Victoria, and interstate material relating to Victorian events, people and institutions.
The Riley and Ephemera Collection began in 1956 when labour activist Fred Riley commenced donating political ephemera to the Library. These donations continued until Riley's death in 1970 and, with subsequent additions, the Collection now includes hundreds of thousands of items of posters, badges, leaflets and handbills. Although attempts are made to collect from all political points of view, the Collection has a strong radical bias which reflects the nature of the kinds of organisations that promote their activities this way. The Library actively seeks relevant material to add to this Collection.
The Collection emphasises Victorian state and local government elections, and Victorian seats in federal elections.
This is a comprehensive collection of Victorian ephemeral material, which includes amateur and professional theatre programs and a wide range of promotional material (for example, season brochures, advertising handbills and postcards) relating to all kinds of live performances. More than 45,000 items have been acquired mainly through donation since the beginning if this collection in the early 1960s. An attempt is made to acquire Victorian material comprehensively. Interstate material relating to major national companies and events such as the Adelaide Festival is collected. Material on overseas performances involving important Australian artists or national or Victorian companies is also collected.
The Library collects ephemera relating to Victorian areas and well-known Victorian people, and to a lesser extent, interstate localities. In general, coverage of interstate material is the domain of other state libraries.
Advertising material is collected selectively. For practical reasons, no attempt is made to collect all advertising material in Victoria. The Library regularly collects samples of advertising material in letterboxes.
The Library collects Victorian material comprehensively. It is assisted in this task by a number of mechanisms:
The provisions of legal deposit as set out in the Libraries Act 1988 require all Victorian publishers to lodge one copy of each of their publications with the State Library of Victoria. The Act defines a publication as:
any printed book, periodical, newspaper, pamphlet, musical score, map, chart, plan, picture, photograph, print and any other printed matter; and any film (including a microfilm and a microfiche), negative, tape, disc, sound track and any other device in which one or more visual images, sounds or other data are embodied so as to be capable (with or without the aid of some other equipment) of being reproduced from it.
The intention of legal deposit is to develop a lasting record of the state’s publishing history. A further consequence of legal deposit is that it has enabled the Library to collect many Victorian publications not held in other libraries, thus providing valuable material for researchers. Examples include extensive holdings of school magazines, of newsletters of many Victorian societies, clubs and associations with state-wide significance, and of newsletters of national organisations based in Victoria.
While the Library aims to collect legal deposit publications comprehensively, some categories of material are not collected. These include ephemeral serials, calendars, tertiary course books, theses, games and company training products.
The legal deposit provisions of the Libraries Act 1988 do not cover Victorian Government publications. Instead, a circular from the Department of Premier and Cabinet released in 2005 requests that all Victorian State Government agencies lodge copies of their publications with the Library. To assist the Library in building a comprehensive record of State Government publishing, the circular also requests that government agencies give permission to the Library to archive their publications and websites from the internet.
The Library participates in a partnership with the National Library of Australia and most other Australian state libraries to preserve digital publications and websites available on the internet. The partnership, known as PANDORA, uses gathering and archiving software developed by the National Library to place a copy of internet digital resources on the PANDORA Archive [external link].
The Library has responsibility for collecting and cataloguing Victorian Internet sites. For all publications collected, permission must be sought from publishers for archiving, as the legal deposit provisions of the Libraries Act 1988 do not cover digital resources.
Collecting focuses on content that is either about Victoria or is on a subject of social, political, cultural, scientific or economic significance and of relevance to Victoria. However, not every digital publication that meets these criteria is archived because there are too many to make this feasible. It is therefore necessary to be selective. A number of guidelines are followed for selecting publications and websites. Priority is given to:
