Archives and Special Collections

Archives and Special Collections THE GRAND TOUR now open, Monday - Friday, 9am - 6pm
Saturday - Sunday, 11am - 5pm

Held deep in the library and in our archives are the treasures of the University. Our collections include rare books, music, maps, and prints, and we hold original items from musical scores to manuscripts from Australia, East Asia and the world. Our 20 kilometres of archives hold records of the activism, politics, business, social movements and significant individuals that have shaped our society.

It is one of the most varied, richest, and largest university archives in Australia. Our collections are available to students, staff and the general public for their own research, accessible via the Baillieu Reading Room, as well as being embedded in a number of our online and face to face classes.

In exciting news for family historians and other researchers, our archivists have now made available digitised student c...
05/06/2026

In exciting news for family historians and other researchers, our archivists have now made available digitised student cards in the University of Melbourne Archives collection. The collection holds student record cards from the University's inception in 1853 to 1986.

Start searching our student cards now 🔗 https://go.unimelb.edu.au/t2se

Meet Daryl Watson, an arts professional who recently completed an internship at the University of Melbourne Archives (UM...
29/05/2026

Meet Daryl Watson, an arts professional who recently completed an internship at the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) working on a pilot program for digitising UMA's AV collection. With a background in fine arts and film, Daryl was interested to learn more about how metadata is used to make information accessible for archival records and digital preservation.

During his placement, Daryl digitised compact cassettes, created basic metadata to help establish the foundations of a record, and provided iterative feedback on workflow. He also reported on the condition of several reel-to-reel audio tapes before they were outsourced for external digitisation.

"I found a recording of Una Porter, an Australian psychiatrist and philanthropist who lived from 1900–1996, was particularly evocative. On the tape, she reads travelogues describing her journey by boat to Ceylon and then overland by train through India in the 1920s. Her measured voice, recorded late in her life, carries the gravitas of age, and the recordings capture a deeply atmospheric picture of a particular time and place. Other recordings I listened to included tapes from the George Paton Art Gallery, the Australian Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Le***an Feminist Archive (VWLLFA).

Look out for future opportunities for internships within our collections.

Meet Xiaoju Liu, our Curator, Rare East Asian who manages a collection of over 20,000 items. The Rare East Asian Collec...
18/05/2026

Meet Xiaoju Liu, our Curator, Rare East Asian who manages a collection of over 20,000 items.

The Rare East Asian Collection consists of books, scrolls, realia, stone rubbings, and ephemera, and is home to four major collections: The Harry Simon Collection, The Thomas Chong Collection, The R.F. Price Collection, and The Valery Garrett Collection.

Join Xiaoju at our next public program, Spotlight On: The lives of commoners in Pre-modern China, this Thursday, 12:30pm in the Baillieu Library.

Book your place 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/aoo2

Words of wisdom from a 1864 tiny book. The Routledge 's Etiquette for Ladies, measuring just 10cm, forms part of our Rar...
13/05/2026

Words of wisdom from a 1864 tiny book. The Routledge 's Etiquette for Ladies, measuring just 10cm, forms part of our Rare Books Collection and contains advice for all occasions in 19th century English society. We've picked out some of our favourites. Which one's yours?

✅ Do not be always witty, even though you should be so happily gifted as to need the caution. To outshine others on every occasion is the surest road to unpopularity.
✅ Notes of invitation and reply should be written on small paper of the best quality, and enclosed in envelopes to correspond.
✅ Every lady should remember that to dress well is a duty which she owes to society; but that to make it her idol is to commit something worse than a folly. Fashion is made for woman; not woman for fashion.
✅ You should never ask for a second supply of either soup or fish; it delays the next course, and keeps the table waiting.

Routledge's etiquette for ladies / by the author of the "Ball-room guide," and "Etiquette for gentlemen, 1864, London: Camden Press, Rare Books Collection.

Last week's Met Gala saw a swathe of celebrities wearing dresses referencing classical Greek sculptures, including Kenda...
11/05/2026

Last week's Met Gala saw a swathe of celebrities wearing dresses referencing classical Greek sculptures, including Kendall Jenner's look inspired by Winged Victory of Samothrace, the second-century Greek statue of the goddess of victory that welcomes visitors to the Louvre.

Closer to home, our exhibition has featured works from the Visual Cultures Resource Centre's collection in the Faculty of Arts, including this silver gelatin photograph of Niobid Chiaramonti, from 1890 (printed in 1927). The statue represents one of the daughters of Niobe as she attempts to escape from the arrows of Apollo and Artemis. Acquired by the Vatican Museums, it was displayed for a long time in the Chiaramonti Museum.

While no longer on display, you can view other photographs from the VCRC collection in until it closes in late June.

Niobid Chiaramonti (4th century BC; Vatican, Rome), c.1890, printed c.1927, silver gelatin photograph, print from glass negative from Carnegie Art Reference Set for Colleges, gift of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1938, Visual Cultures Resource Centre, Faculty of Arts.

📷 by our talented Collection Management Officer, Exhibition Projects Allison O'Connell

04/05/2026

Join us for our latest program on Thursday 21 May to hear from Xiaoju Liu, our Curator of Rare East Asian, discuss what rare collection items can tell us about the lives of everyday people in a period marked by Dynastic rule. How do these objects challenge official histories and shift our perceptions of life in Pre-modern China.

Learn more and book your place 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/u9tp

Applications for the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship are now due by Monday 11 May, giving you more time to ap...
29/04/2026

Applications for the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship are now due by Monday 11 May, giving you more time to apply for this amazing opportunity to respond creatively to the collection.

The Fellowship is aimed at emerging writers, early career practitioners, and recent graduates, for creative work that responds to the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson collection, drawing connections and bringing new insights to the material.

Applications close at 11:55pm, Monday 11 May, AEST.

Learn more 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/u9tp

Image: Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, London : The Hogarth Press, 1938, Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Collection, Rare Books Collection.

Don't miss your chance to apply for the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship. The Fellowship is aimed at emerging ...
16/04/2026

Don't miss your chance to apply for the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship.
The Fellowship is aimed at emerging writers, early career practitioners, and recent graduates, for creative work that responds to the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Collection, drawing connections and bringing new insights to the material. The Fellowship is named in honour of University alumnus Joyce Thorpe Nicholson, and funded though her generous bequest to the University.

The successful applicant will receive a $20,000 award.
Applications close Monday 4 May. Learn more 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/u9tp

14/04/2026

Don't miss our next public program, an in-conversation event unpacking Ground Tours, a new temporary exhibition by the Tributaries Collective opening tomorrow in the Noel Shaw Gallery.

Tributaries members will illuminate how the Parkville campus’ underground waterways became acoustic tunnels for conversation and vocalising between collective members.

This conversation is the first in our series, our new public program series. Sediment is a series of responses experimenting in form, exploring intersecting and related themes and topics from the material holdings at Archives and Special Collections.

Book your place 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/xut2

Developed in dialogue with The Grand Tour exhibition, Ground Tours is a temporary exhibition of fieldwork by Tributaries...
09/04/2026

Developed in dialogue with The Grand Tour exhibition, Ground Tours is a temporary exhibition of fieldwork by Tributaries collective, undertaken in and around the University’s Parkville campus.

The exhibition features audiovisual works and an accompanying poster series made across three stormwater drain grills. Guided by the sonic water flow of a now-submerged creek under the campus connecting with the Birrarung, the collective conversed, made sounds, listened and vocalised across distances with each other and the ecologies that now live below ground.

Ground Tours questions traditions of walking and touring, while turning our attention to the local and unseen.

On display in the Noel Shaw Gallery, Baillieu Library from 15 – 30 April.

Learn more 🔗 go.unimelb.edu.au/7tf2

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3rd Floor, Baillieu Library
Melbourne, VIC
3010

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