Project update 5 - Annual reports and botany

This week I've been looking through the annual reports for the Free Public Library and Public Library of New South Wales from 1869 to 1911, for any clues on formed collections or significant donations that were made during that period. In many of the reports the President notes significant donations or purchases. For example, in March 1891 the classical and scientific library of W. J. Stephens, including 1431 books and nearly 200 pamphlets, was bought by the Free Public Library. Many of these titles are in the rare books collection although the provenance is only recorded in a few.

Stephens was a trustee of the Free Public Library from 1870 and its president in 1885-90. He was also a member of the Philosophical (Royal) Society of NSW, a founding councillor of the Entomological Society of NSW and a foundation member of the Linnean Society of NSW in 1874. In 1879 Stephens helped to found the Zoological Society of NSW and in 1883-85 was a founding vice-president of the NSW branch of the Geographical Society of Australasia. Is it any wonder that one of the strengths of the Library's collections is Natural History!

I've also been trailling through A Botanical miscellany : a bibliography of those botanical works, herbals and flowerbooks, from the 15th to the 20th century, held in the Rare Books and Special Collections of the General Reference Library compiled by Neil Boness in 1987. Many of the volumes listed in the bibliography do not have an electronic catalogue record or have a very brief record. Many are or will be on the Unique & Significant list. Below is a wonderful example of Library provenance or how to make sure a thief doesn't profit from their work! Pomona Herefordiensis: containing coloured engravings of the old cider and perry fruits of Herefordshire..., 1811 , by Thomas Knight was originally part of the Australian Subscription Library - as you can see by the stamp! It contains 30 hand-coloured aquatint plates engraved and coloured by William Hooker. This bibliography is an exhibition in waiting.

Reader Services diversion

Have you tried to explain why we ask clients not to re shelve books from the Reference and Open Access collections? This excerpt from the Report of the Sydney Free Public Library for 1870 - 71, Page 4, provides the perfect explanation.

"Following the example of other Institutions of a similar kind, the selection from the shelves of the Library of books by adult visitors is unrestricted, but they are not permitted to replace the volumes. This course was adopted with the view of familiarizing the officers of the Library with the class of Literature in daily use, and of assisting them to report accurately to the Trustees on the educational uses of the Library; and it was also of great importance in preventing books being misplaced and thus disturbing the order of the Library."

Well said and still true to this day!

Project update 4 - Unique and/or significant?

An interesting week wandering the shelves with purpose...We have an 1829 version of the Australian Subscription Library Catalogue. If we needed to identify the 1826 collection this would make it much easier. I'll organise to have the catalogue digitised along with the Rules and regulations for the conduct of the Australian Subscription Library and Reading Room, 1826.
I have identified some other interesting items this week including:

The Laboratory, or school of arts, 1756, a two volume work by George Smith. Along with instructions on glass making, paper marbling and gold refining there are fascinating instructions on making fireworks including rockets, firewheels, stars and illuminated letters with detailed drawings.

An amazing collection of manuscripts on the Slave Trade, dated between 1556 and 1792, collected by George Chalmers. You can read a brief biography on George Chalmers on Wikipedia. The Banks Papers includes correspondence between Chalmers from the Office of Trade and Banks in 1805. Among the documents is a series of letters related to the 1787 plan to settle some of London's "Black Poor" in Sierra Leone. This is a fascinating and little known story. Half of the prospective new settlers didn't turn up to embark on the voyage as they thought they were going to be shipped off to a convict settlement! There is information on the Black Poor and the Sierra Leone scheme on the National Archives site in the UK. The Library purchased the documents in 1880.

Delicious diversion

I've had a Delicious account for a while. I've used the tag "Rarebooks" for sites that I use regularly such as the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers or sites with interesting or useful information. The best thing is that if you load the Delicious tag icons onto the toolbar of your browser you can quickly bookmark any sites. I've loaded them on my desktop at work (Shhh..the Service desk may be listening!) so I can quickly tag anything I see as I am working.
I've added my Delicious tags in the right column after the Blog archive.

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!

Project update 2 - Provenance

Over the last week I have been thinking about the next step....Having located what I can so far on the development of Rare Books and Special collections it is now time to turn to the collections themselves.
I'd like to look at the collections that formed the base of the "Special Collections" created in 1963. One of the documents I found in the files listed the criteria for material to be moved out of the general collections. A lot of the material was collected in the nineteenth century and I would like to look at the provenance of some of this material. For background I've been reading Historical notes on the Public Library of NSW, 1911, by F.M. Bladen. It would be interesting to find examples in the collection that were owned and donated by some of the early founders and trustees of the Library.
The DSM project has located material from the original David Scott Mitchell bequest but how can I go about locating this earlier material from the Public Library? I'll try the notes field on the catalogue but I won't hold my breath! I'll try the "Points" catalogue held in the Rare books card catalogue in the RB stack. I could also look through the old annual reports from the Trustees in the nineteenth century - then there is the option of a physical search. Any other suggestions?

Videos online diversion

This blog will take a short entertaining diversion into the online rare book world.....I love this video on the Medieval Helpdesk



( I followed the link to Queensland Stories on the OLD State Library website. I think moving from the introduction page to the catalogue listing and clicking through the results may be confusing for some clients. However, overall I felt a sinking feeling that once again we have colleagues in other institutions trying new technologies and creating incredibly interesting and informative online content - and we are way behind the starting line....)