Nathan Hobby recently joined the Library as Special Collections Librarian/Archivist in our Collections team. We spoke to Nathan to learn more about his work history, interests and his role at the library.
I started my career in 2003 as a library officer at Cambridge Library and later Bassendean Library. When I completed my librarian qualification, I worked at the State Library of Western Australia as a graduate librarian. From 2008 to 2022, I managed the theological library at Morling College, an academic library serving students up to doctoral level located across the road from Curtin University in Bentley. My role at Morling College included a bit of everything – collection development, eBooks, acquisitions, cataloguing, reference services and promotion. Meanwhile, I also pursued my love of history and archives with a PhD at the University of Western Australia. When I graduated, I also undertook side work as a heritage officer for the City of Gosnells, which was good preparation for my new role at Curtin University.
I commenced in my role as Special Collections Librarian / Archivist at Curtin University Library in July this year. In conjunction with the other half of the team – Coordinator, Library Special Collections, Sally Laming – I look after Curtin’s special collections, including our remarkable collection of John Curtin’s papers, collections about tobacco control and the writer Elizabeth Jolley, as well as our rare books. I catalogue, repair, rehouse and digitise items in the collections, answer reference queries and promote the collections. There’s always something interesting happening in this role – soon I’ll be conducting an oral history interview with Elizabeth Jolley’s typist of forty years ahead of Jolley’s centenary next year.
In addition to my role at Curtin University, I’m also a writer and my second book, The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard, came out this year with Melbourne University Press. It took eight years, so I’ve been spending a long time deciding on the subject of my next book, knowing I’ll be working on it for a long time!
I love the privilege of being the custodian of old books and the archival remains of the dead (as well as some living). On Curtin University Library’s Twitter account, I’ve started a thread of ‘#GhostLibraries’ – the stamps, signatures, borrowing rules, and inscriptions of the defunct libraries, bookshops, and private collections who owned our books before we did.
