Tuesday, 10 February 2026
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to the Elders of all parts of our country from which you have travelled today.

Parliamentarians past and present,^[1] Judges of the Supreme Court,^[2] current and former Judges of the Family Court of Australia,^[3] Former Chancellor,^[4] State Librarian and Mitchell Librarian,^[5] staff and supporters of the State Library of NSW, distinguished guests all,

A library, like the books they collect and contain, is both an abstraction and a solid physical thing, a conjunction encapsulated so poetically by Gail Varson Levine^[6] with the definition “A library is infinity under a roof.”

In terms of the institution whose bicentenary we celebrate tonight, its beginnings as an idea preceded its manifestation in concrete form by many years.

To borrow a quip from the Sydney historian Mary Salmon, Australia had a catalogue for a lending library long before it had a lending library itself.^[7] Here, she was referencing the Sydney reading clubs of the early nineteenth century, where gentlemen would add to a combined catalogue those of their books that “they were willing to allow others the use of, upon the obligation being reciprocated.”^[8]

Such a system, however, relied upon books—that rare and expensive commodity—already being in the Colony. An answer lay in the formation of a subscription service, whereby collected membership fees would fund the purchase of new books in London, their transport to Sydney, and facilities through which members might access, and borrow from, the resulting collections.

Hence the meeting called by Lieutenant de la Condamine, Aide-de-Camp to the recently arrived Governor, Sir Ralph Darling, on the 3rd of February 1826 in the Sydney Hotel.^[9] From it would spring the Australian Subscription Library and Reading Room, Australia’s oldest continuous lending library and genesis of the State Library of NSW.^[10]

Less than a month after that foundational meeting, an article appeared in the Sydney Gazette, which began…

In the midst of that variety of opinions which has been advanced in reference to the improvement of Society in this Country, […] it has ever been our conviction, that every movement, whether of a political, agricultural, commercial, or scientific nature, can possibly have hut one tendency, viz. to ‘ADVANCE AUSTRALIA’.^[11]

In terms of those listed movements, the article continued, much progress had been achieved. And, indeed, as our celebrations for the recent bicentenaries of the Royal Society, the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW, the Legislative Council, and the Supreme Court of NSW, attest, important strides were being made at the time…

Where such progress was lacking, the article claimed, was in the field of literature… and, in particular, the spread and cultivation of knowledge. It was a lack, the paper hoped, the newly founded subscription library would obviate.

That is…

As the period has arrived, when a thirst for knowledge seems to be daily gaining ground, we have no doubt that the Subscription Reading Library will be found to answer the most sanguine expectations, and ultimately become an elegant and substantial appendage to the extending empire of Australia.^[12]

To paraphrase: a lending library is not just a symbol of a society’s progress, but rather, its necessary requirement.

From our vantage point today, I think we can safely say, those hopes have been thoroughly fulfilled.

Although, as we shall see, the more egalitarian aspects of this emergent pride in the growing Colony and the idealism of this desire to expand and improve its cultural life would take several decades to fully emerge.[^13]

But back to the brass tacks of history.

Following a series of meetings throughout 1826, the putting together of wish lists of books to purchase, and the organisation of rooms to store the books when they arrived, the Subscription Library finally opened its doors for the first time in December 1827, in a building shared with the Sydney Dispensary, with the Dispenser acting as part-time librarian.^[14]

There then followed a peripatetic existence as the collection was moved around Sydney from building to building according to circumstance until finally getting its own purpose-built home on the corner of Bent and Macquarie Streets, diagonally opposite where the State Library now stands.^[15]

But… it was struggling financially—never recovering from the debts incurred in building the Bent Street premises—and becoming increasingly controversial in terms of its expense and exclusivity, in essence, an out-of-touch and cliquish gentlemen’s club.

Then, there was the matter of gifts of land made to it by Governor Darling in 1831. Should an exclusively private institution gain benefit from Government support, particularly when the Governor’s gift had come with the proviso that the library would become public?^[16]

In the end, economics took over and the government bought the building and its contents in its entirety, and it was reopened as the Sydney Free Public Library by the Governor, Lord Belmore, on the 30th of September 1869.^[17]

From then on, the Library began expanding its outreach and services apace,^[18] as well as building one of the world’s richest collections of Australiana, particularly after the extraordinary bequest of David Scott Mitchell in 1898.

The following year, in 1899, the Library employed its first female librarian, Nita Kibble, whose signature on her application to become a junior library attendant was mistaken for that of a man’s. There was some consternation when she turned up to sit the entrance exam but, when she aced it (coming first!),^[19] she was taken on, and ended up staying at the Library for nearly 45 years, retiring as Head of the Research Service in 1943.^[20]

Nita was to be the first of many… two years after her appointment, three more women topped the entrance examinations and joined the staff. Within a decade after this, most of the middle-ranking positions in the Library were occupied by women.^[21]

There have been three female State Librarians—Alison Laura Crook, Regina Anne Sutton, and Dr Caroline Butler-Bowden—four if you count Lucy Milne’s term as acting State Librarian.^[22]

By 1910, the size of the Mitchell bequest required its own dedicated building, which was opened by the Governor, Lord Chelmsford, with the words

But while you may regard these [records] […] as dry and uninteresting, I am confident that some day a man will come along who will touch with the finger of genius these dry bones and make them live. (Cheers.) So we ought to value this library as relics of our national existence — part of ourselves — and give it the very highest reverence that we can.^[23]

Today, 200 years after that meeting in the Sydney Hotel, the State Library of NSW stands as one of our most treasured public institutions. With more than 360 public libraries across NSW, universal free access, thriving digital platforms, and deep community engagement, it continues to serve as a cornerstone of cultural memory, learning, and public life.

It is not just the repository of our shared history, but also the means through which we articulate, interpret, and express that history… a living evolving forum for our community’s intellectual life… a focal point for research, understanding, and connection.

I congratulate all who have played a part in this extraordinary history, and all those who will continue to contribute.

I look forward to the many experiences organised for us over the coming year of celebrations, and the many opportunities to learn about how we got to be where we are and where we might be headed, as we mark the bicentenary of this wonderful heart of our community, the State Library of NSW.