University of Melbourne Acquires Germaine Greer's Archive

News broke a few hours ago that the University of Melbourne has acquired the archive of one of its leading alumni, the notable academic and feminist, Germaine Greer.

According to the write-up in The Guardian:

'The archive, including manuscripts of Greer's books, her diaries and correspondence with some of the most significant intellectuals and politicians of the past century, fills more than 150 filing cabinets and spans the years from her student life in Melbourne, Sydney and Cambridge to the present day. It includes early notes for and a synopsis of her groundbreaking bestseller The Female Eunuch, as well as diaries and letters to her lovers, family and friends ... The correspondence files include letters from the novelist Margaret Atwood, activist Abbie Hoffman, film director and actor Warren Beatty (who was at one time Greer's lover), art critic John Berger, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, film director Federico Fellini, former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, writer and television personality Clive James, feminist writer Dale Spender and many more'.

The University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said the university will ship, catalogue and digitise the archive, which will be exhibited at the university.

The archive is expected to arrive in Melbourne in July 2014. Proceeds from the $3m purchase will go to the Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.

Announcement and 'About the Archive' on the University of Melbourne, University Library, website.

Preserving Blaeu's 'Archipelagus Orientalis'

[A look at the conservation work being done on the National Library of Australia's copy of Joan Blaeu's map, the Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (1663), acquired by the NLA earlier this year. The map, as noted in the post below, is just one of four surviving copies known.]

[Reposted from the NLA's Behind the Scenes blog]

Opening on 7 November, our summer blockbuster Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia features one of the Library’s recent major map acquisitions – Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (Eastern and Asian archipelago), 1663 by Dutch master cartographer Joan Blaeu (1596-1673).

This remarkable wall chart – one of only four surviving copies in the world, is in an exceedingly fragile state, but conservators from the Library’s Preservation Branch have embarked on a meticulous and time-consuming preservation treatment to stabilise it for display. Fortunately, the areas of greatest interest, illuminating the story of the Dutch discovery of Australia – the mention of the first sighting of Tasmania and the text naming the continent – are intact and clearly visible.

We produced this video to highlight the significant preservation work that is underway:

If you would like to make a financial contribution to the preservation of the Blaeu map, you can make a tax-deductible  donation online or download and return the donation form. You can learn more about the preservation effort on our webpage dedicated to the map.

We are pleased to release this video under a Creative Commons licence that makes it available for everyone to share and re-use. Because of that, we have been able to upload the video to Wikimedia Commons which allows it to be used directly within Wikipedia articles – notably on the biography of Blaeu himself. We would like to especially acknowledge the Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of the Netherlands for translating the captions to this video into Dutch.

---

Read more about the map and its acquisition.

Eyewitness Letter to the Capture of Ned Kelly Surfaces After 133 Years

The Victorian bushranger Edward 'Ned' Kelly is one of nineteenth-century Australia's most well known and controversial figures. His exploits in Victoria and southern New South Wales, which culminated in the siege at Glenrowan (late June 1880) where Kelly and members of his gang donned make-shift body armour to deflect police bullets, have seen Kelly labelled an outlaw and murderer by some and folk hero by others.

Now, after 133 years, a letter containing an eyewitness account of Kelly's dramatic capture during the siege has been donated to the State Library of Victoria by the descendants of its author – Scotsman, Donald Gray Sutherland.

What makes this letter particularly interesting is that it offers a new perspective. According to the historian Alex McDermott, unlike previous accounts, which were written either by government officials or Kelly sympathisers, Sutherland was 'an everyday bank teller from Oxley, a little town near Glenrowan, and [was] not on the side of the Kellys and ... not on the side of the police'.

[From the State Library of Victoria website]

The letter addressed to Sutherland’s family on 8 July 1880 proclaims ‘… the Kelly’s are annihilated. The gang is completely destroyed…’. It continues describing Kelly’s famous armour and the gunshot wounds that finally brought him down.

‘He was wounded in 5 or 6 places, only in the arms and legs – His body and head being encased in armour made from the moule (sic) boards of a lot of ploughs. Now the farmers about here, have been getting their moule boards taken off their ploughs at night for a long time but who ever dreamed it was the Kellys and that they would be used for such a purpose. Ned’s armour alone weighed 97 pounds. The police thought he was a fiend seeing their rifle bullets mere sliding off him like hail. They were firing into him at about 10 yards in the grim light of the morning without the slightest effect. The force of the rifle bullets made him stagger when hit but it was only when they got him in the legs and arms that he reluctantly fell exclaiming as he did so I am done I am done.’

Sutherland enclosed a lock of hair from Kelly’s horse with the letter, noting in the postscript, ‘The hair enclosed is from the tail of Ned Kelly the famous murderer and bushranger’s mare. His favourite mare who followed him all around the trees during the firing. He said he wouldn’t care for himself if he thought his mare safe.’

Sue Roberts, CEO and State Librarian described the donation of the letter as extremely generous and a significant addition to the Kelly story.

‘This letter is a very personal account of events that have become part of Australia’s folklore. We are delighted that Mr Sutherland’s family chose the State Library of Victoria as caretaker for this remarkable document. It will join Ned's armour, Jerilderie Letter and other important items in our Kelly collection – one of the largest and most significant in the world.’

The letter will be on display in the State Library’s Changing Face of Victoria exhibition from Monday (14 October). It is also available online with a full transcript via the State Library website.

Panel Discussion on 'Beautiful Books'

The Wheeler Centre has uploaded video of the 2013 Melbourne Rare Book Week opening night panel discussion 'Beautiful Books':

http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/beautiful-books/

'Passionate bibliophiles – including a collector, a designer and a twenty-first-century book-maker – will explore changing perspectives on what makes a book beautiful … and what makes us treasure it long after its shelf life.

With Des Cowley, Rare Printed Collections Manager at the State Library of Victoria, designer W. H. Chong, and booki.sh founder Virginia Murdoch. Hosted by Steve Grimwade.

In the midst of the e-revolution, where we’re as likely to download as to leaf through a book, the idea of the book as an object of beauty is being lost. Or is it?'

Melbourne Rare Book Week ran from 18 to 28 July.

2014 AU/ NZ Rare Books Summer School Schedule Announced

[The following was posted on the ANZ Rare Books and Special Collections Librarians listserv by Des Cowley, Rare Printed Collections Manager, State Library of Victoria]

The State Library of Victoria is pleased to announce that the 9TH AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND RARE BOOKS SUMMER SCHOOL is to be held at the STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA, 10-14 FEBRUARY 2014

The Domed Reading Room, State Library
of Victoria (Image: Random Photons blog)

From Book to Building: Architecture and Design from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century
(Instructor: Harriet Edquist)

Palladio’s treatise I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture, 1570) was one of the most influential pattern books in European architectural history, setting out rules for architectural design that were transported across the globe and had currency for three centuries. In the nineteenth century Owen Jones’s treatise The Grammar of Ornament (1856) similarly set the fashion for books on design reform.

Drawing on the State Library’s rich collection of architecture and design publications from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, this course will introduce participants not only to the histories of these books and their authors but also how they influenced some of Melbourne’s most iconic buildings and their interiors.

Harriet Edquist is professor of Architectural History and Director of the RMIT Design Archives at RMIT University. She was curator of the exhibition 'Free, Secular and Democratic: Building the Public Library 1853-1913', at the Murdoch Gallery, State Library of Victoria, 2013-2014.

The Paper Museum: Opening Up Natural History Illustration
(Instructor: John Kean)

The desire to better understand the world through the examination of animals at close range has driven scientific discovery since the Renaissance. The images created over the centuries and preserved in precious volumes comprise a vast ‘paper museum’. From Robert Hooke’s humble flea, as seen through a compound microscope in 1665, to the ‘double elephant’ folios of John James Audubon, rare books provide intimate access to the great minds of science and art.

The State Library's collection encompasses scientific treatises, taxonomic monographs and lavish folios. The volumes reveal the story of exploration, colonisation and scientific advance, as well as shining light on the world's biological diversity. This course will take participants through the history of scientific illustration, while focusing on particular classes of animal, geographic regions and printing techniques. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn directly from contemporary illustrators who maintain time-honoured techniques, with a contemporary twist.

John Kean is currently undertaking a PhD in art history at the University of Melbourne. He is the curator of the touring exhibition 'The Art of Science: remarkable natural history illustrations from Museum Victoria'.

The Poetics of Printing on the Iron Hand-Press
(Instructor: Caren Florence)

Participants in this course will combine the mind, hand and eye with a classic printing process to explore the physical qualities of text. They will experience hand-rolling both wood and metal type and printing on fine papers with an iron hand-press. They will learn to use the type creatively, operate the press safely and control the ink when rolling both small typefaces and large surfaces. The emphasis will be on text as image, with poetry as the main focus.

Caren Florance is a Canberra-based printer. She teaches book arts and letterpress at the Australian National University School of Art and operates the private press Ampersand Duck. Her printing output spans both traditional and less structured textual works.

This course will be held at the Ancora Press studio at Monash University’s Caulfield campus.

Applications
Applications will close on Friday 6 December 2013. Due to the rare and valuable nature of the materials that students will have access to, numbers are strictly limited, and early application is encouraged. Courses will proceed if sufficient applications have been received by Friday 22 November 2013 (to give interstate and overseas participants time to make travel arrangements).

All applications will be acknowledged upon receipt (preferably by email), and all applicants will be notified of their selection or otherwise in December.

Fees
The fee for each course is A$750. Successful applicants will receive a tax invoice and must pay the full fee by Monday 16 December 2013, by credit card (Visa or MasterCard) or cheque. Confirmation of your place will be made upon receipt of payment.

Further information, along with application form, will shortly appear on the State Library of Victoria website.

For more information, email rbss[@]slv.vic.gov.au.

Update: Shakespeare Folios and Senate House Library

[Posted on SHARP-L by Simon Eliot, Professor of the History of the Book at the School of Advanced Study, University of London]

Decision on Shakespeare Folios
The University of London this evening announced that it will not be continuing with its consultation over the potential sale of four Shakespeare Folios. However, the development of its Senate House Library Special Collections remains a priority.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Adrian Smith, said: “The University has decided to focus its attention on examining alternative ways of investing in the collection. The money raised from any sale would have been used to invest in the future of the Library by acquiring major works and archives of English literature.”

Sir Adrian explained that the decision not to continue with the consultation on the proposed sale had been reached in view of the feedback already received from the academic community.

Ends


James Pestell

Director of Marketing and External Relations University of London Senate House

Petition Against Proposed Sale by Senate House Library of Its Four Shakespeare Folios

[Reposted from The Fine Books Blog]

Word circulated on several electronic discussion lists yesterday that London's Senate House Library--the central library of the University of London--plans to sell four Shakespeare Folios at a Bonhams auction this November. The immediate effect of the sale would be to create an endowment in order to attract more readers and push for restoration of government funding lost in 2006.

Professor H.R. Woudhuysen at Lincoln College, Oxford, sent a long letter last week to Christopher Pressler, director of Senate House Libraries, responding to Pressler's request for 'support' in his decision to sell the folios. Woudhuysen, also vice-president of the Bibliographical Society and co-general editor of The Oxford Companion to the Book wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that I am not able to offer the support that you seek and that I am entirely against any such move." He goes on to say, "On the basis of the documents that I have seen, it seems to me that the sale and its implications have not been thought through properly and that the Trustees have already taken a decision to sell the books through Bonhams, making any public consultation merely decorative. The decision will, I hope, attract a great deal of opposition from supporters of Senate House and if executed, it will, I fear, make many who are supporters of the library and possible donors to it turn their charitable interests elsewhere."

Book historians and special collections librarians on the ExLibris and SHARP-L lists (and Twitter) noted that this type of "asset stripping" in collections is hardly new and should be carefully scrutinized. Library-donor relations are a major theme of this conversation, as many wonder how to trust a library that renegotiates the status of a gift fifty and one hundred years on. The folios in question were donated to the university by Sir Louis Sterling in 1956; as a group, the four have been together since the 1830s. The SHL's website calls the Sterling collection, "an unusually integrated resource for research on the transmission of English literary texts from the 14th century to the present day."

While Professor Woudhuysen did receive a "bland reply" from Pressler in response to his letter, the SHL has not issued an official statement on the auction. A request for comment sent to Mr. Pressler yesterday has not yet received a reply. 

Today, The Bibliographical Society joined the debate by starting a petition that urges the SHL to "reconsider the proposed sale of its first four Shakespeare Folios." After signing his support on that page, antiquarian bookseller Laurence Worms commented, "I teach at the London Rare Books School at Senate House. This proposal damages the very basis of all we try to do."