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.

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.

About 140 oral history interviews, the majority for his Maltese-Australian and Polish-Australian folklore and social history projects. Personal papers of York plus papers of the historian Michael Cigler. Also a large quantity of Maltese newspapers, student newspapers, radical pamphlets and ephemera.

Drawings, sketches, plans and photographs of Australian colonial architecture, ancient buildings from China and Greece, furnature designs and sketches for a proposed "ideal city" of Kurrajong.

The JC Williamson Ltd archives include a wide range of materials, such as business records, playscripts, libretti, music, programs, magazines, books, costume designs, and photographs. It also contains personal papers from Williamson's business partners, the Tait family and George Tallis.

About 3200 books, pamphlets, serials, maps, newspapers and ephemera mainly related to Japan plus some works on China and Korea.

Personal papers of Patrick White, plus letters from White to other Australian writers acquired as part of their papers. Also papers of White's biographer David Marr and those of the artist and theatre designer Desmond Digby who had a long friendship with White.

Discover the Whelan Collection, a remarkable archive of Australian literature with over 1,000 autographed books, manuscripts, and letters from 1892 to 1967. Collected by bibliophile Philip Whelan, it offers a rare glimpse into Australia’s rich storytelling heritage and vibrant literary culture.

A vast repository of over 4,000 books, primarily in Chinese, covering history, culture, politics, and religion. Collected between 1950 and 2000, it includes rare texts from Taiwan and China, reflecting the richness of Chinese scholarship. 

Explore letters written by Dorothy Richmond about her experience travelling to Europe with the 1924 Australian Olympic team.

This Collection contains around 150 Chinese books, including some very rare works. They cover a range of subjects such as Chinese history, literature, society, classics, philosophy and religion.