The Mitchell Library Reading Room: a personal memoir about the 1960s to 1980s

Abstract

The Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Macquarie Street, Sydney, is one of the pre-eminent repositories of Australian and Pacific material in the world. This paper traces the author’s involvement with the Mitchell Library Reading Room from the 1960s, when she was a student, to the 1980s, when she was Mitchell Librarian. During those decades the Mitchell Library, once a quiet place of scholarship, became extremely busy and crowded with the exponential interest in studying and researching Australian history and issues, placing great strains on a collection which had never been adequately funded, staffed or resourced.