The National Library has been selectively collecting Australian printed ephemera since the early 1960s so we can tell the story of Australian life, culture, and major events and issues.

About 140 oral history interviews, the majority for his Maltese-Australian and Polish-Australian folklore and social history projects. Personal papers of York plus papers of the historian Michael Cigler. Also a large quantity of Maltese newspapers, student newspapers, radical pamphlets and ephemera.

More than 400 Russian socialist pamphlets published mainly in the period 1900-1945, and 2 microfilm collections from Stanford and Harvard Universities of Russian revolutionary literature from 1898-1922.

Over 3,000 printed pamphlets, leaflets and issues of periodicals, mostly published 1900-1970, plus a collection of microfiche and microfilm of other publications, produced by left-wing parties and organisations in the period 1961–88.

Papers, pamphlets, books and periodicals relating to communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, international relations, public finance, politics, World War II, and the Vietnam War.

Memorabilia of musical, theatrical, social events in Queensland collected by the Benvenuti family musicians.

Thousands of pamphlets, booklets, leaflets, speeches, brochures and other material from political parties, trade unions, pressure groups and other bodies concerned with the Australian labour movement from the 1890s to 1960s.

Pamphlets, journals and other publications documenting many strands of American radicalism.

Pamphlets, newspapers, printed ephemera, transcripts from archives in Ireland and Australia, records of Irish organisations in Australia, and personal papers of Irish nationalists and Catholic clergy. Also about 1200 photographs of Australian places and people with an Irish connection.

1,300 pamphlets and tracts published in Britain between 1829 and 1882. They provide a valuable record of the issues that were discussed and debated in Britain in the middle decades of the 19th century.

About 15,000 books and pamphlets. The great strength of the collection is in Pacific voyages and early Australiana with many very rare items. Also manuscripts including papers of Joseph Banks, maps and pictures.

Around 186 Chinese newspapers and serials, mostly published from 1949 to 1984, plus a small number of government documents of the period 1969 to 1977, monographs, pamphlets, mimeographed works, and some works published during the Japanese occupation of China.