We held the third illustrated Shakespeare lecture and discovered the objects and stories that reveal how Shakespeare made landfall in Australia.  

See Dr Kate Flaherty and actors from Bell Shakespeare explore the link between the books that inspired Shakespeare and Shakespeare's own work.

Hear Oxford academic Professor Emma Smith, the world’s leading Shakespeare scholar, discuss Shakespeare’s First Folio as part of its 400 year anniversary.

A comprehensive collection of manuscript pencil scores, drafts of compositions, and fair copies of Sitsky's music dating from 1958 onwards.

About 15,500 items of sheet music and about 700 music albums from the late eighteenth century to the 1980s, as well as the personal papers of Snell.

Dr Wesley Lim presented a lecture on his 2023 National Library Fellowship research into the papers of dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser.

12,569 music scores which were used in Australian cinemas in the silent film era (roughly 1896 to 1929).

This large collection of music covering seven decades of Australian musical history, consists of scores and performance parts.

Discover the Symphony Australia Collection, featuring unpublished music by Australian composers from 1910 to 1970, including Alfred Hill, Peter Sculthorpe, and Margaret Sutherland. With chamber, choral, orchestral, and vocal pieces, as well as works from the colonial era and Eugene Goossens, this collection, donated in 2001, is a key resource in Australian music history.

Enter the musical world of seventeenth and early nineteenth century Britain with rare prints, books and manuscripts.

Our theatre and performance music collections showcase the music Australians were listening to throughout the 20th century.

Our collections document the history and development of dramatic and comic theatre in Australia.