Institutional memory and memory institutions

Memory institutions, including libraries, transmit experience and creativity across the borders of time and space, language and custom, tribe and individuality. As institutions, they have their own memories, enshrined in their collections and buildings and as mutable as human memory. Those memories echo through the institutions, shaping expectations and possibilities. Tracing its history back nearly two centuries, the State Library of New South Wales has its own deep memories that condition its present and contribute to its future. This paper offers a case study of that Library to explore the nature and consequences of institutional memory in memory institutions. The address on which this paper is based opened the 11th Library History Forum held at the State Library of New South Wales on the 18th and 19th November, 2014.