AROUND THE WORLD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 516, 13 May 1949, Page 12

AROUND THE WORLD

Fees: _-- An Search of Australia

Zealand’s Alexander Turnull Library is the Mitchell Library, in Sydney, in which are gathered almost all Australia’s early archives. David Scott Mitchell, who died in 1898, bequeathed /to the nation his unique collection of | Australiana and an endowment of | £70,000 for its upkeep. Already the | collection was outgrowing the Mitchell | home, which in the owner’s lifetime had had to be specially strengthened to support the weight of books and archives. The New South Wales Government accordingly built a special library, which was opened in 1907. Upkeep~on the building and salaries are paid by Government grant, and the interest on the endowment can therefore be used entirely for the purchase of new books and the repair of existing ones. Miss Phyllis Mander-fones (above), Chief Librarian of the Mitchell Library, recently passed through Wellington on the last lap of a world tour financed by the British Council and the Carnegie Corporation of America. Miss ManderJones has been searching out Australiana in overseas museums and libraries, and also looking into modern methods of | storing and recording original material. | Miss Mander-Jones has been away @ | year, visiting France, Holland, Great | Britain, Canada, the United States, and many of the South American countries. _ The Mitchell Library is concerned with Australia and the South West Pacific, and purchases all new material _ relating to the area, but it is the mass ‘of original manuscripts, drawings and _ photographs which presents problems in storage. The Library owns 3,000 bound volumes of manuscripts, the rest are housed in folders and filing-cabinets. | Miss Mandér-Jones was impressed by A COUNTERPART of New

the technique used in large libraries in the United States. The manuscripts are cleaned by a_ special dust-extractor, damped, pressed, and finally covered with clear plastic. (Incidentally, the uses of cellophane are fully appreciated in New Zealand, and those interested may see the original draft of the Treaty of Waitangi which, cleaned, and covered with cellophane, is housed in a box specially made for it in the strongroom of Government Building.) Miss Mander-Jones spoke of the use being made of micro-film in recording original material. The Mitchell Library and the National Library, Canberra, are co-operating in a programme of copying for the benefit of Australian scholars manuscript records relating to Australia and the Pacific owned by overseas libraries. While Miss Mander-Jones was in London a start was being made there at the Public Record Office. The extensive use of microfilm for this and similar purposes will make material from all over the world readily available, and will do a great deal to cancel gut the disadvantages at present felt by scholars and students far away from the sources of their material. When all the available material has been collected the Australian Government will publish it in full. The Mitchell Library itself already makes extensive use of microfilm. The Sydney Public Library, housed in the same building, owns a microfilm camera, and many of the Mitchell manuscripts have been microfilmed. The library of course retains the original manuscripts, but the microfilm copies can then be lent to schools and other libraries. Miss Mander-Jones ‘was glad to have the opportunity of coming to New Zealand, since she feels there is too little contact between librarians here and in Australia, particularly as so many of their interests lie in the South-West Pacific and so metry of their sources overlap.