Australia does not have a well-developed network of foundations or endowments that may often assist libraries elsewhere with expensive purchases. Nevertheless, the National Library of Australia does have a collection of rare books, which although small, is of interest and has strengths in several areas. There are estimated to be about 55,000 original items in the Library's collection with publication dates before 1801. Of necessity, the Library has supplemented these holdings with large sets of microfilm and microfiche that extend the general reach of the collection. As with most of its collections, the difficulty of cataloguing these rapidly acquired materials were a continuing problem for a number of years.
Progress is therefore slow but steady.
A separate initiative, the European Microform Project headed by the University of Adelaide has been obtaining and commissioning cataloguing records for items in microform sets, and some of this work has led to making early imprints on microfilm much more visible. Rare books from Great Britain form the greatest strength of the Library's collection. A number of scholarly and family libraries were acquired to build and develop the collection. A number of books, pamphlets and manuscripts assembled by Leon Kashnor, proprietor of the Museum Bookstore in London as a personal collection was among the earliest collections obtained by the Library. This collection of over 12,000 items on the political economy of Great Britain and Ireland from 1650 to 1870 contains a number of rare works and editions of the early economists.