How to find and use items in the Manuscripts collection.

Our Manuscripts collections are wide ranging and provide rich evidence of the lives and activities of Australians who have shaped our society.

Explore election ephemera from 1901 to 1970s, now online.

With a generous bequest from Frank van Straten AM, the Library has brought Jim Sharman’s visual diaries and an original Rocky Horror Picture Show script online for the 50th anniversary of the film’s release.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of pages of content are added to our digital collections and made available online through Trove.

Enter the time warp and explore the Rocky Horror Picture Show script and Jim Sharman’s visual diaries, now on Trove.

Topic

Sir Edmund Barton (1849–1920) was Australia’s first prime minister, playing a key role in shaping the Constitution.

Over 10,000 black and white negatives and colour transparencies, about 1000 exhibition prints, several photograph albums, a group of stereographs, plus maps, diaries and personal papers.

Photographs, programs, cast lists, souvenir booklets, invitations and ephemera relating to Australian ballet, plus personal papers of Geoffrey Ingram and Edouard and Xenia Borovansky.

Over 13,000 negatives, transparencies, and photographs of cattle stations taken between 1951 and 1961, as well as 52 British Hydrographic Office charts and maps of Australia and the Pacific and personal papers of Johnston.

950 books on bibliography, history, law, religion, ethnography, archaeology and fine arts of Indonesia, 629 books relating to the languages of Austronesia and some manuscripts, including transcripts of a collection of Sudanese manuscripts.

Over 6000 books, pamphlets and journals mainly related to Australian history and politics, as well as personal papers and a significant number of British and American imprints.