The Research Library has a Reference Service that is available to the public online via the National Gallery website. Since 2020 the Research Library has partnered with Wikimedia Australia to host and support Know My Name edit-a-thons to increase understanding and appreciation of work by Australian women artists.
The Research Library holdings provide a general coverage of art history with particular strengths supporting the Gallery's art collection, these include:
Supporting this last collection of Paris Salon catalogues, the Research Library has developed an extensive finding aid[4] and research resource to assist researchers.
The Ephemera collection consists of more than 100,000 files, with over 1 million items, containing information on the National Gallery of Australia, Australian art schools and galleries, and on Australian and International artists, museums, collectors and curators.
This is also known as the Documentation Collection, and each individual file can contain press clippings, exhibition flyers, catalogues, receipt books, or price lists preserved in mylar packets and acid-free archival boxes. These materials can be used to establish art chronologies and values.[1]
The Research Library Audio Visual collection includes published and unpublished documentary audio and video recordings relating to many National Gallery events and interviews with artists. Notable amongst the collection are 98 interviews by the artist James Gleeson conducted in the late 1970s called the James Gleeson Oral History Collection,[5] which has been inscribed into the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register 2008[6] as being of significant Australian cultural heritage.
