Researching your bestseller

Inspired by the Sydney Writers Festival? Want to enrich details in a current manuscript? Or maybe you have the beginnings of an idea for a writing project and aren’t sure how to progress. Come along to this half-day program aimed at helping you develop your writing project.

This event will take place in the Dixson Room, Ground Floor, Mitchell Building, State Library of NSW.

The program includes the following sessions:

Talk by Dr Rachel Franks

Rachel Franks holds PhDs in Australian crime fiction and in true crime texts. A qualified educator and librarian, her extensive work on crime fiction, true crime, popular culture and information science has been presented at numerous conferences, as well as on radio and television. An award-winning writer, she is the author of An Uncommon Hangman: The Life and Deaths of Robert ‘Nosey Bob’ Howard (2022).

Rachel is the coordinator of scholarship at the State Library of NSW.

Eresources for research

Special Collections Librarian Jane will cover the Library catalogue and using online databases for research (freely available as a Library member). Focusing on primary source databases such as Migration to New Worlds and The Transformation of Shopping, 1830-1994.

Secret librarian tools

An overview of card catalogues, indexes, guides and other excellent research tools that are not online with, Special Collections Librarian, David.

Inspiring Australia’s writers

View the collections that have inspired literary works and bestsellers by Australian writers including Melissa Ashley, Peter Corris, Ian Hoskins, Gail Jones, Eleanor Limprecht and Luke Slattery.

Thank you for your interest in attending a program at the State Library of NSW. Please see the Terms and Conditions on our website which apply to all our programs and events.