The National Library’s refreshed Treasures Gallery now feels different yet familiar, with fresh carpets, paintwork, and new digital screens designed to answer the questions visitors always ask, reports arts editor HELEN MUSA.

I must have looked like an eager-beaver pilgrim when Guy Hansen, director of exhibitions at the National Library of Australia, let me in 10 minutes early for the reopening of its refreshed Treasures.

To Hansen, the much-lauded gallery would indeed become a destination of pilgrimage for all Australians on holidays and weekends.

The space, first launched in 2011 after the celebrated Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries exhibition drew huge crowds in 2001, now feels different yet familiar, with fresh carpets, paintwork, and new digital screens designed to answer the questions visitors always ask: Where are the books? What does the library collect? And why?

Behind-the-scenes videos now take audiences deep into the stacks and conservation areas, reinforcing that the library is far more than shelves of books. 

Alongside its millions of volumes, the collection spans maps, manuscripts, photographs, artworks, ephemera, and digital material – part of what they’re calling the “Digital Library of Australia”.

First up on my self-guided tour, was a page from The Merchant of Venice taken from the First Folio of 1623, printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed Blount.

Nearby, what appears to be an artist’s book is actually The Sixteen Arhats of the Sakyamuni Buddha, drawn on leaves and later mounted on paper and silk, with text in Sanskrit and classical Chinese.

Nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock books sit beside modern Australian items, a reminder that the library’s collection grows by 2.5 linear kilometres every year, thanks to legal deposit requirements under the Copyright Act 1968.

Treasures range from Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians in an early Penguin edition to Melway’s Greater Perth Street Directory from 2010; a selection of self-published zines; a display of The Wiggles’ websites; and even a Holden V8 Series service manual.

Ephemera is given pride of place, including a cedar bookcase carved by poet Dorothea Mackellar around 1900.

A considerable part of the show looks at Australian life through photography and posters – including the unmistakable Condoman safe-sex campaign poster created by Aboriginal health workers in Townsville.

The library is plainly eager to showcase its rich Pacific, Indonesian and Chinese collections, tracing their origins back to the library’s early efforts under its inaugural national librarian, Harold White. A standout piece is a 1970s gunungan (mountain) – the symbolic entry piece to Javanese wayang kulit – crafted from painted buffalo hide with a horn handle.

Maps, timetables, directories and scientific illustrations reveal how Australians have understood land, sea, plants and animals, with special attention to First Nations’ concept of Country. 

Unsurprisingly, much of the material is digital, including folklore recordings, digital histories and “born-digital” resources such as e-books, all accessible through Trove, which now indexes around 14 billion digital items.

The library is far more than just books, so pride of place is also given to the manuscript collection – personal papers, diaries and letters, including a lengthy typed letter from journalist Keith Murdoch to Prime Minister Andrew Fisher in 1915 concerning the Gallipoli campaign.

One section deals with political history – Documentary Democracy – and close-by is the Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) display curated by Eddie Koiki Mabo’s daughter Gail. There’s even a reproduction of a 1980 self-portrait by Mabo. Who knew that he had joined the Townsville arts scene in the 1960s?

We should give the last word to curator Grace Blakeley-Carroll, who had seen the newly opened gallery as a teenager during 2011.

Describing the revamped Treasures Gallery as “a much lighter and brighter space,” she says, “The Treasures Gallery turns the focus on to what’s actually in the library.”

The refreshed, permanent Treasures Gallery, National Library of Australia.