Ask a librarian, Collection spotlights:
The women’s movement, the advent of television, rock and roll, the gay rights movement, the Vietnam War: explore photographs and documents bringing the turbulent 50s, 60s and 70s to life.
News:
State Library Victoria is saddened by the passing of Australian artist Petr Herel. Petr was a practicing artist for over sixty years, and was best known for his printmaking and his exquisite artist books.
Collection Development & Description:
It often takes a village to catalogue a rare book. In this blog post, SLV rare books cataloguer Nina Whittaker shares the dynamic, and transnational, process of cataloguing a Ukrainian prayer book. This journey takes us from Melbourne to Croatia, to Bosnia and the Yugoslav People’s Army, and ultimately through to the Ukrainian migrant community in Geelong and the 2016 SLV Ukrainian Fellowship
Ask a librarian, Collection spotlights, Victorian history:
Edna Walling was a trailblazing Australian garden designer of the 20th century. Her passion, uncompromising vision and way with words changed the way we think about our gardens.
With the help of the Women Writers Fund, the Library recently acquired Laura Dayton Fessenden’s most fascinating work of speculative fiction, 2002: Childlife One Hundred Years From Now.
Ask a librarian, Collection spotlights:
There are many names in the history of feminism and women’s rights but, unlike Mary Wollstonecraft, Vida Goldstein or Emmeline Pankhurst, the name Dr. Aletta. H. Jacobs (1854-1929) is little known, even though many of her papers have been collected by UNESCO in their Memory of the World archive.
“To be happy, one must rid oneself of prejudice, be virtuous, healthy, and have a capacity for enjoyment and for passion“ – Émilie du Châtelet, Discours sur le bonheur. Le siècle… Read More ›
Ask a librarian, Collection spotlights, Victorian history:
The 1970s and 80s saw a dramatic change in Melbourne’s restaurant scene. One of the most influential restaurants of this period was Stephanie Alexander’s restaurant, Stephanie’s. Through menus, photographs, recipes, notebooks and more, the Stephanie Alexander collection provides a taste of what it was like to eat at Stephanie’s in its heyday.
Family matters, Research tips & tricks:
In 2021 the Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria Inc. (CAFHOV) launched a fascinating new resource, the Victorian CEDT index. This online resource indexes three registers of applications for Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test (CEDT), covering the years 1904-1959. Over 90% of the people listed were Chinese, however people with Indian, Japanese or Syrian ancestry are also included.
Mary Fortune was the author of the longest running 19th-century crime fiction series published in a periodical and one of the earliest female crime writers in the world.
To celebrate the Children’s Book Council of Australia Week, we pay tribute to the life of children’s literature collector, Ken Pound, and the collection he has left for us all.
