Where your contributions go

When you become a Foundation member, donate money, support special appeals or make a general bequest, your contribution goes to the State Library of Victoria Foundation.

The Foundation helps the Library buy and conserve some of its most important collection items, as well as mount major exhibitions, events and programs.

Unique collection items

Your support means important heritage items can be bought by the Library and enjoyed by Victorians now and for years to come. Discover some of the unique materials the Foundation has helped the Library acquire:

Rennie Ellis Collection

This extraordinary archive of images by the celebrated Melbourne photographer Rennie Ellis is a valuable record of Victorian life and culture in the late 20th century.

Ellis's photographs encompass social history and politics, the nightclub scene and parties, popular culture, sport and portraiture. They record Melbourne's diverse street life, with significant series on Toorak Road, graffiti sites, festivals and markets. His subjects include celebrities and socialites; artists, actors, writers and musicians; shopkeepers, politicians and activists; migrants, families and ordinary people in the suburbs.

Ballarat goldfields diary

This extraordinary diary was written in 1855 by a Scottish gold-digger living in Ballarat. It charts six eventful months in the miner's life, telling of a fire that killed 11 people, the arrival of new prostitutes in town and the escape of a Bengal tiger in Ballarat's Main Street.

Fascinating in its detail, the diary brings Victoria's historic gold rush period to life.

Mark Strizic archive

In 2007 the Library acquired Mark Strizic's entire archive of around 5000 negatives, colour transparencies and slides. The internationally renowned photographer has captured changes in Melbourne's society and urban landscape for over 50 years.

Strizic is best known for his images of Melbourne in the 1950s and 60s, when he recorded the last vestiges of one of the world's great Victorian cities as many of its historic buildings fell.

Juan Davila's Panorama of Melbourne

This 12-metre panorama traces the evolution of Melbourne's built environment, from the homes of Indigenous Victorians and the tent city of white settlement through to the computer-aided design of contemporary city buildings. It concludes with a futuristic view of what the city may become.

Juan Davila is one of Australia's most influential contemporary painters and the Library holds one of just two copies of this grand work.

Peter Carey papers

Highlights in this collection of papers include the publisher's manuscripts for the bestseller True history of the Kelly Gang, and working notebooks belonging to the Booker Prize-winning author. Also among the papers are typescripts, complete electronic drafts and corrected hardcopy drafts of Carey's novels Wrong about Japan, Theft: a love story and My life as a fake.