Fifty books from fifty years: celebrating a half century of collecting

The Library is presenting a special exhibition as part of Monash University’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Fifty academics and researchers were asked to select a book which has particular significance to them from the Rare Books Collection. The result is an amazing variety of items, many of which are on display for the first time.

The exhibition can be seen at Sir Louis Matheson Library and was opened in the presence of an enthusiastic crowd of academic staff and visitors on Wednesday 7 May by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) Adam Shoemaker.

This exhibition, which will run until 31 August, presents a broad cross-section of Rare Books holdings chosen by the people who use them. The exhibition catalogue and web gallery, available online, provide a preview and detailed explanations about why items were chosen

Among the wealth of older material on display is an eighteenth century French alchemical manuscript, chosen and described by Professor Wal Kirsop of the Monash Centre for the Book, and a cookbook from the same period.

The Dean of Arts, Professor Rae Frances, has chosen a group of late nineteenth, early twentieth century books on the problem of white slavery, narratives of sexual enslavement used by her in her latest book, Selling sex: a hidden history of prostitution.

The most colourful of the recent items includes some pulp science fiction magazines chosen by Dr. Robert Savage of the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, and Australian pulp detective novels, described by Chris Wood of the National Centre for Australian Studies.

Dr. Janine Burke is currently researching a book on Yoko Ono and has chosen to describe some of Yoko’s early exhibition catalogues held in the library collection. These are now quite rare and valuable, and are not widely held in Australia.

12 May 2008

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An elaborate golden lyrebird graces the covers of John Gould's seven volume Birds of Australia, a highlight of the exhibition at the Matheson Library.