The State Library of NSW is celebrating its 200th anniversary with a new exhibition featuring 200 objects from its collection of 6 million items. Lead curator Elise Edmonds and her team selected highlights including a lock of Mary Shelley's hair, the smallest book in the library's collection (measuring 6mm by 6mm), bread wrappers from the 1960s, a colonial sketchbook from 1817, a Dharawal Indigenous language wordlist, Australia's oldest surviving political cartoon from 1808, and a contemporary artwork by Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens. The objects span literature, colonial history, Indigenous culture, sport, and everyday life.
The exhibition matters because it showcases the breadth and depth of the State Library's holdings, revealing how a library can preserve not only books but also artifacts that tell the story of a region's social, political, and cultural history. The inclusion of Indigenous wordlists highlights the library's role in language reclamation, while the political cartoon and colonial sketches offer rare insights into early Australian society. The exhibition also demonstrates how contemporary artists like Karla Dickens engage with historical collections to critique colonial legacies.