Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

State Library of New South Wales

The State Library of NSW is the oldest library in Australia. In 1869 the NSW Government purchased the Australian Subscription Library, which had been established in 1826, to form the Sydney Free Public Library, the first truly public library for the people of NSW. The Mitchell Library, the first library in the country to concentrate entirely on Australian content, opened in 1910.

Milestone
Replaced
1869
Name
Alternate
Australian Subscription Library
1826 - 1869
Alternate
Australian Library and Literary Institution
1853 - 1869
Alternate
Sydney Free Public Library
1869 - 1895
Alternate
Public Library of New South Wales
1895 - 1975
Position
1870 - 1883
1893 - 1906
1895 - 1909
1906 - 1946
Jul 1912 - Mar 1942
1921 - 1968
1926 - 1942
1942 - 1958
1958 - 1973
Property
Occupied
Comprises
Comprises
Administers
Occupied
1869 - 01 Jun 1942
Type

The Mitchell

CC BY-SA 2.0
,
2014

For a century the Mitchell Library has been Sydney's memory, a storehouse of treasures and a club of eccentric scholars. It is all but impossible to write or read about the history of Australia, the Pacific and the Antarctic without being in debt to the great collector and eccentric recluse David Scott Mitchell.

Free Public Library

,
2019


The Free Public Library - which we now know as the State Library of NSW - arose from the ashes of the Australian Library and Literary Institution and its immediate predecessor, the Australian Subscription Library.