Society & Culture

A panel of First Nations voices, facilitated by Wiradjuri woman and media personality Rae Johnston, discusses the continuing impact of Cook and his voyages on First Nations peoples today.  

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Edinburgh-based mapmaking firm of John Bartholomew & Son Ltd printed a growing number of maps both for the Australian market and depicting Australia. Chris Fleet, Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland, examines recent research into the Bartholomew Archive and poses the question: how powerful were these maps in defining broader British imperial ideologies and in shaping views of Australia? Presented in association with the Australian & New Zealand Map Society.

Derek Wrigley, Meredith Hinchcliffe and Amy Jarvis discuss the work of furniture designer Fred Ward, whose work was commissioned for the Library building in the 1960s.

The generation that made 1968 sought to change the world and to change themselves, shaped by three political conflicts—the Second World War, the Cold War and the Third World Revolution—and the youth cultural revolution of the 1960s. Paris is generally seen to be the epicentre of protest in 1968, but it was just one site of a global revolt that stretched from Mexico to Prague and from Belfast to Cape Town. Professor of Modern History Robert Gildea (University of Oxford) examines the May 1968 protests in France and the impact that continues to be felt 50 years on. In partnership with the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.   Image: French singer and activist Dominique Grange

Join Pictures Acquisition Officer and 2017 National Library Indigenous Graduate Jodie Dowd as she shares her experience as the first Indigenous Australian to undertake a placement in collections management at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.Jodie will reveal how this experience enabled her to have a cross-cultural exchange with indigenous peoples from the Americas, and how the NMAI incorporates indigenous knowledge into western collection management practices.

Dr Lucas Jordan reveals the story of the six Australian souvenir hunters who crossed the Somme River and captured Chipilly Spur during what was arguably the most decisive battle of the war.

Join curators Dr Guy Hansen, Dr Grace Blakeley-Carroll and Dr Walter Kudrycz as they discuss the making of the Library's current exhibition, 1968: Changing Times, sharing their discoveries from the Library’s collections and revealing the challenges they faced in producing a history exhibition using just a single year as a frame of reference.