Project update 3 - Provenance

This week I've established that identifying material lodged in the Australian Subscription Library in 1826 is possible ...but it isn't possible in the time I have for this project! The books have been stamped but they would need to be cross referenced with a catalogue which exists for 1838 - possibly earlier and time would be needed to sight every volume in a similar way to the DSM project. The Australian Subscription Library items are spread across the collections in both SRL and Mitchell. Were they transferred to the Mitchell because they had Australian content? or did Anderson or an earlier Librarian sell some of the collection to Angus & Robertson and it was sold back into the Mitchell collection? I've seen a couple with the DS Mitchell signature.


This week I'll concentrate on the provenance of some of the more significant items and special collections. For example, the Vaughan and Van Manen Chess collections which include over 40,000 games of chess carefully documented...I don't think many chess players know these collections exist! The Sicilian defence is a particular favourite of Vaughan.


I'll also start documenting some of the "unknown" items in the SRL Rare Books stack - there are a number of uncatalogued albums full of cigarette cards and too many collections of post cards to mention!