Books on music and printed music published in Britain from the mid-17th century to the 20th century.

Ever wondered how people learned the piano in the 1780s, 1880s and 1980s?

The Library’s medieval manuscripts comprise more than 6000 individual folios in 250 items and 12 bound volumes, dispersed across several collections.

3099 books & pamphlets, plus modern facsimile editions of medieval manuscripts with a strength in English philology, including English dialects, as well as European poetry, novels, literature, and religion.

About 15,000 books and pamphlets. The great strength of the collection is in Pacific voyages and early Australiana with many very rare items. Also manuscripts including papers of Joseph Banks, maps and pictures.

About 440 books published by William Pickering between 1820 and 1854 including reprints of classics and seventeenth-century Anglican religious works, plus contemporary writers of his time.

Lavishly illustrated travel books had long been popular in Europe and North America when the same American team that produced Picturesque Canada established the Picturesque Atlas Publishing Company in Wynyard Square, Sydney, on Gadigal Country, in 1885.

There are numerous guides and bibliographies available to help you navigate the Library's vast collections.

How is a rare book about swimming connected to an important early European map of Australia and American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin? Find out in this blog.

Explore dictionaries of various shapes, sizes, languages and subjects from the Library's collection.

The Margarita Philosophica (Pearl of Philosophy) (1517) of German Carthusian monk and prior Gregor Reisch (c. 1467-1525).

Celebrate William Shakespeare's birthday with Shakespearean gems from the National Library's rare books collections.