The glittering silk and velvet pageant costume on the cover is one of many extraordinary costumes designed by Thelma Thomas in the 1930s. An article on Thomas, and one on Manton’s department store - a household name in Melbourne in the same period - give a taste of mid-20th-century style.The countless photographs held by the State Library span the history of photography. We look behind the scenes at acquiring, preserving, researching, cataloguing and digitising collections - from rare photographs of 19th-century western Victoria, to early 20th-century glass plate negatives, to contemporary photobooks.And we shine a light on the Ken Pound Collection of children’s books and ephemera, and hear from an illustrator who used the Library’s Children’s Literature Collection for inspiration for her own work.