Mm

... you know, sold by a book dealer or something like that.

So they really fill in layers of society that how else would e- we ever do that? And that, to me, that's a layer that I want the library's collections to have, is humanity.

Because it's the State Library of New South Wales.

It's people's collection.

It's a public collection.

Wow.

So when he met Dorothy, th- this, it was the idea that they were counteracting all the negative notes by loving notes, by creating loving messages for each other.

I'm talking the kind of vinegar that comes in a two-liter bottle, and you use it to clean your drains.

So you can see we're actually testing for vinegar syndrome here, and this is what happens with old microfilms.

The, the film is just degrading, so that's where you're getting that vinegar smell.

It's so weird because 100 years ago, storing documents and images on microfilm was a cutting-edge technology that promised to outlast paper.

You know, we, before we could digitize materials, they were microfilmed, and they'd been doing microfilming since the '30s.

And so they would photograph an item or, um, a series of journals or newspapers, and then they would transfer it into a microfilm ra- reel like this.

And that's how you would access it, and you'd look at a microfilm reader in the reading rooms.

Really?

... to this sort of material.

So before we had the strong room, uh, back in the '20s and '30s, there were actually, there was things in the librarian's office, and their call number began with L.

Yeah.

And in the bottom of the cabinet there was a drawer, and we opened the drawer, and in it was a whole lot of stuff that had been sitting there since the 1960s.

[laughs] No.

And he goes up to the counter, and he says, "Can I have some chips?"

Down here, it's like a bunker.

Underneath Macquarie Street, we have seven floors of stacks, and on each floor you have a compass.

Because some people, when they get downstairs, they get disoriented, and they're not quite sure where is north, south, east, and west.