The National Library of Australia has launched its 2025 Tax Time Appeal with an urgent call for public support to digitise one of the country’s most historically vital and climate-relevant collections—its archives on Antarctica.
At the heart of the campaign is a push to preserve and share materials chronicling Australia’s more than 100-year involvement in Antarctic exploration and science. These include personal diaries, photographs, expedition logs, and artworks, much of which remain unseen by the wider public. The Library aims to make these records accessible through its online platform, Trove, which already adds over a million pages of new content every year.
Director-General Dr Marie-Louise Ayres said the Library’s focus on Antarctica was driven both by historical depth and contemporary urgency. “Australia has been exploring and studying Antarctica for over a century,” she said. “Researchers and explorers have mapped uncharted territory, documented new scientific discoveries, and established a presence in Antarctica that still plays an important scientific role in 2025.”
The materials held by the Library include the personal papers of Phillip Law, a towering figure in Antarctic history. As director of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE) between 1949 and 1966, Law led efforts to chart more than 5000 kilometres of Antarctic coastline. His wife, Nel Law, made history in 1961 as the first Australian woman to set foot on the icy continent, and her diaries, letters, and watercolours are preserved alongside her husband’s work in the Library’s archives.
Digitising these records is about more than preservation—it’s about relevance. “As climate change continues to manifest,” Dr Ayres said, “understanding the changes that have occurred in the Antarctic environment over the past century will be crucial for our future. Bringing these collections online through Trove will help to build that understanding.”
This appeal also highlights a broader trend: the shift in how Australians access and interact with their national heritage. Trove, developed and maintained by the National Library, has become an indispensable research tool, particularly for historians, scientists, students, and journalists. The integration of Antarctic materials will add valuable depth to an already robust platform.
But digitisation is resource-intensive. Converting fragile documents, scanning high-resolution images, and ensuring accurate metadata takes both time and funding. That’s where the public comes in. Donations to the 2025 Tax Time Appeal will directly support this process, ensuring these irreplaceable items are preserved digitally for generations to come.
The appeal closes on 30 June, and the Library is urging Australians to contribute whatever they can. As Dr Ayres points out, the materials are more than artefacts—they are threads in the country’s cultural and scientific fabric.
“The stories in our Antarctic collections deserve to be seen, studied, and understood,” she said. “By supporting this appeal, the public is helping bring those stories to light.”
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