The First in the Field: Prime Ministers' Papers in The National Library of Australia.

The National Library first acquired papers of a Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton, in 1929. In the next fifty years it sought the papers of every Prime Minister, dead or alive. Negotiations were frequently protracted and frustrating, but ultimately the success rate was high: the Library now holds the personal archives of eleven Prime Ministers and smaller collections of another four. Since 1980 it has deferred to the National Archives in collecting further papers of Prime Ministers and has instead placed greater emphasis on making the existing collections better known and encouraging their use by researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]