State Library of Tasmania

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About the Images Collection


The State Library of Tasmania's heritage resources are held in four Heritage Collections:
  • The Tasmaniana Library holds mainly published material (books and pamphlets, maps, postcards, posters and printed ephemera) relating to Tasmania.
  • The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts has rich holdings of rare books, works of art, prints, photographs, manuscripts and decorative arts. Most of the visual material is nineteenth-century Tasmanian works, with members of the Allport family strongly represented.
  • The W.L. Crowther Library has similarly wide-ranging collections relating largely to Tasmania, but also to other subject areas such as the history of whaling and medical history. Again, the visual material is largely Colonial.
  • The Launceston Local Studies Library holds printed, manuscript and photographic material relating to northern Tasmania.

The 6,000 images already available on the State Library's “Images from the Heritage Collections” web site include:
  • All of the original paintings, drawings and sketches in the Heritage Collections.
  • Some (but not yet all) of the Library's collections of photographs.
  • The JWB Murphy Collection of posters advertising theatrical, film and sporting performances in Hobart from 1896 to 1920
  • Tasmanian images in the Picturesque atlas of Australasia (1886) and the Jubilee history of Tasmania (1887).
  • A selection of scrimshaw pieces which are held in the W.L. Crowther Library.
  • A selection of early nineteenth-century Tasmanian paper currency
  • Full bibliographical records for all items are included on the 'Images' web site as well as in the Library's on-line catalogue.
  • Further photographs from the Allport and Crowther collections
  • Further illustrations from significant Tasmanian works of history and description
  • Tasmanian apple and pear case labels from the Tasmaniana Library
  • Decorative arts (silver, porcelain, glass and furniture) from the Allport collections
  • The Tasmaniana Library's postcard collection
  • Photographs from the Launceston Local Studies Library.

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