THE LIBRARY
History
Each member of the 1821 Philosophical Society of Australasia furnished the secretary with an alphabetical catalogue of the books in his private library, and these were available on loan to other members. At that stage the Society had no journal, but some of the papers read were included in a book edited by Barron Field, one of its members, and published in London 1825.
The Australian Philosophical Society of 1850 likewise had no journal, but its proceedings were reported very fully in the local press. In 1857 selected papers and abstracts were printed in The Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, a private commercial venture, but the arrangement lasted for only a year or two, and recourse was had again to the public press. In 1866 appeared the Society's own publication, the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales, 1862-1865. The Royal Society of New South Wales initiated the yearly publication of Transactions in 1867, and ten years later the present title Journal and Proceedings of The Royal Society of New South Wales was adopted.
In 1875 the Society began to exchange publications with other scientific organizations on a world wide basis and a small library and reading-room were established at 5 Elizabeth Street, Sydney. But the space available was quite inadequate, and it was only after the move to Science House in 1931 that the books and periodicals could be disposed systematically on shelves in a specially designed room.
The Collection
By 1960 the library consisted of some 40,000 volumes and the exchange list contained about 400 names. In 1980 the library had grown further still and the exchange list comprised more than 600 names. The Collection included a number of rare volumes and some of the periodicals were unobtainable in any other Australian library.
By 1983 it was no longer possible to house the Collection in Sydney and it was transferred to the Dixson Library at the University of New England, Armidale (see their Special Collections in Dixson Library). The exchange program continues unaltered and the function of the Collection remains as it has been since 1875. The older "inactive" part of the Library are specially housed. The active journals are available on open access in the main library shelves. Their identity as part of The Royal Society of New South Wales Collection is indicated in each case by the Society's crest embossed in gold on the spine.
The major subject areas of the collection are the natural sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and, in particular, geology and palaeontology. There are also significant holdings in the life sciences, though this field of knowledge is more the province of a companion body, the Linnean Society of New South Wales.
Exchange arrangements between The Royal Society of New South Wales and national academies of science, learned societies, other institutions and universities in countries all over the world have been central to the development of the collection. Great Britain, the United States, and states that were formerly parts of the U.S.S.R. are strongly represented as are Scandinavia, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. India, China (both the People's Republic and the Republic of China), and Japan are major exchange partners. Material is also received from countries in Africa, South America, the Middle East and from South East Asia and the South Pacific region.
The collection is an asset to scholars not only at the University of New England but also through inter-library loan, to the wider academic community.